What a lot of contortions we are seeing this morning from so many quarters about the Article 50 ruling. Brexiteers such as Iain Duncan Smith are cross with the Supreme Court for ruling that Parliament must have a say on triggering the process for Brexit, with the former Tory leader telling the BBC this morning that the judgement raised ‘real constitutional issues’:
‘They have stepped into new territory here, where they have actually told parliament not just that they should do something, but actually what they should do. I think that leads further down the road to real constitutional issues about who is supreme in this role.’
There is something mighty peculiar about any member of the House of Commons complaining that the legislature is getting more of a chance to scrutinise and approve the government’s plans. But it is even stranger coming from a man who made his name harnessing some of the power of the Commons to make his own point about Europe. Presumably Iain Duncan Smith regarded himself as a responsible scrutineer performing one of his roles as a parliamentarian when he rebelled 11 times on Maastricht. But perhaps the difference in his mind is that those MPs who would want to vote against the Article 50 Bill are not taking the same stance as him and are therefore wrong and should be stopped.
The Supreme Court isn’t so much telling Parliament what to do as telling the Executive what to do, and protecting Parliament as part of that. It is not directing Parliament’s response to the Bill, merely saying that it is constitutional for Parliament to have a say. And this leads us to the second contortion of the Brexiteers. One of the more captivating arguments in the referendum was that the Westminster Parliament is by and large the better place to make decisions about policy than Brussels is. Parliament should be trusted – except when it comes to scrutinising the government as it enacts the will of the British people, it turns out. If Leave campaigners thought that Parliament should be sovereign, it is an odd response for them to complain the first time that sovereignty is asserted by a court of law.
The Brexiteers are not the only ones practising a strange political yoga this morning. Remainers are grumpy that Labour has said it will not vote against the Bill when it comes before Parliament. This is what Jeremy Corbyn had to say this morning:
‘The Government has today been forced by the Supreme Court to accept the sovereignty of Parliament. Labour respects the result of the referendum and the will of the British people and will not frustrate the process for invoking Article 50.
‘However, Labour will seek to amend the Article 50 Bill to prevent the Conservatives using Brexit to turn Britain into a bargain basement tax haven off the coast of Europe. Labour is demanding a plan from the Government to ensure it is accountable to Parliament throughout the negotiations and a meaningful vote to ensure the final deal is given Parliamentary approval.’
What Jeremy Corbyn is saying is that Labour is going to have a go at providing meaningful opposition in Parliament. Some people seem to have taken the word ‘Opposition’ so literally that they think the only way of scrutinising the government is to block legislation, rather than to try to amend and improve it. The Labour Party is already in a pickle in many of its constituencies which voted Leave in the referendum, and to appear to ignore the will of its electorate by blocking Article 50 would have serious long-term consequences for its already rather precarious chances of survival. It is therefore far more constructive for it to try to focus on the kind of Brexit that the government is aiming for – though this Bill is unlikely to be the appropriate vehicle for that.
It is almost as though everyone in the Brexit debate is so concerned with things going their way that they don’t want to consider the wider principles at stake of how things should be done in Parliament and how Parliament’s sovereignty, something important to Brexiteer and Remainer alike, should be protected.
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