Parliament and power

Who should govern Britain? This has always been the most contentious question in British politics. Magna Carta, the Reformation, the Civil War, the Glorious Revolution and the Reform Acts were all struggles over this fundamental point.

Brexit asks this question twice over, so we should not be surprised by how divisive an issue it has become. It is about the extent to which the writ of the European Union should run in the United Kingdom — but also about the relationship between the people and parliament. By an overwhelming majority, MPs legislated to let the public decide. But ever since the voters returned the opposite answer to what the Commons was expecting, MPs have struggled to come to terms with the result. Too many of them have been preoccupied with neutering or overturning it rather than making it work.

The problem is that both EU membership and referendums run contrary to the British constitutional tradition. Neither sit easily with our system of government.

The Reformation ingrained a particular view of sovereignty that makes it hard to accept the jurisdiction of a supranational body. Our thinking to this day is still shaped by Thomas Cromwell’s decision to define England as an empire in which the king was the authority on all matters. As Hugo Young reflected in This Blessed Plot, an approving history of Britain’s EU membership, the 1957 Treaty of Rome sat uneasily with the 1533 Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome, which effectively ended the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church in England. Over time, Cromwell’s doctrine developed so the monarch in Parliament was sovereign.

The idea persists that Parliament can ultimately do what it wants. It is no coincidence that it was David Lidington, a Tudor historian, who argued in cabinet that MPs are overthinking the backstop and that Parliament could simply decide to override it if it became intolerable.