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UK's Brexit Cannot Pass Without Parliament Approval (aljazeera.com)
Parliament must vote on whether the UK can start the process of leaving the EU, the High Court ruled on Thursday. This means the government cannot trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty -- beginning formal exit-negotiations with the EU on its own. An anonymous reader shares a report on AlJazeera: The UK's High Court has ruled that Theresa May's administration is not allowed to trigger the country's exit from the European Union, or Brexit, without approval from parliament. Three senior judges ruled on Thursday that "the government does not have the power under the Crown's prerogative" to start EU exit talks. The case is considered the most important constitutional matter in a generation. The government plans to appeal the ruling before the Supreme Court. Plans for Brexit are being challenged in a case with major constitutional implications, hinging on the balance of power between parliament and the government. May has said she will launch exit negotiations with the EU by March 31.
Unless they don't come the conclusion that we want them to, then it's OK to just ignore what they say.
I'm sure that literally every poster who thinks this is wonderful would have also been OK with an elite ruling counsel deciding to overturn.. oh I dunno... Obama's election to be president. Or maybe Obamacare.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Your Parliament should approve for two reasons:
1. You had a referendum that was clean.
2. Your sovereignty is worth more than the conveniences the EU provides.
No one in their right mind should support a second referendum because the first was clean and dissidents had their chance to vote. They lost. Holding a second referendum on any big issue that has been decided in a clean vote is nothing less than "make the plebs vote until they 'get it right.'" It's the most subtle way of undermining the democratic process there is. Who is going to keep taking time off from work to affirm "yes, I really meant that?" If someone didn't understand and "voted wrong" they don't get a do-over. That's not how the democratic process works. "I was too damn lazy to use Google and educate myself" is a confession that one lacks civic virtue, not a valid excuse. If you don't know, don't vote.
All referendums in the UK are not legally binding and, as such, merely advisory.
It depends on what the enabling legislation for the referendum says. The vote a few years ago to change the electoral system WAS binding because the bill that set up the referendum expressly said it was. The legislation for the EU referendum did not, it said that the referendum was merely advisory and the result certainly not binding.
As a whole the parliament should respect the result of the referendum and approve Brexit.
The problem is that individually, every MP has a position on Brexit and some of them might have promised to their people that they would vote against Brexit. And this is part of democracy too.
If a majority of the MPs are in this situation, the parliament as a whole could reject Brexit even tough it's against the will of the people. The conservative government want to avoid this deadlock and hoped to avoid a vote in the parliament for this reason. If the UK didn't have an archaic first past the post voting system, they might not have been in this situation. To begin with, the conservatives should not have done this non-binding referendum if they didn't have a majority of pro-Brexit MPs in the parliament to approve the result.
Fucking moron.
Hey why bother to have the slightest clue. We're in a post factual age and given your attitude it's no wonder you're a rabid Brexit supporter.
This ruling has literally nothing to do with your mindless blithering. But whatever, it didn't stop you having a very loud, very misinformed and very deeply held opinion on it.
This ruling means the PM has no legal power to unilaterally overturn laws just because she really really REALLY wants to. A change in the law has to go through parliament and be voted on by the MPs like oh I don't know, every other law ever.
No. Fucking. Shit.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
So you'll accept the result of the vote.... just as long as you win. [...] It was not advisory, it was not mandatory, it was a referendum. The fact you can play tricks and delay the will of the people is your lot being toss pots.
Go look up the definition of "non legally binding referendum", and then you will be qualified to continue in this conversation. Now elected officials have been informed that a slight majority of the population want to enact a major change to their country's economy and international relations, and have access to exit polls and other demographic data to get a sense of why people voted the way they did and what type of Brexit they wanted. The UK doesn't have a direct democracy for a reason, so now the professionals will take over.
This was not legally binding for the same reason you would let random citizens perform a surgery by committee.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I also love seeing the comments "The will of the people." Let's keep in mind that leave was 52% to 48%. Although it is an outcome to leave by the measure of democracy, it's hardly a decisive result. Furthermore, if you care to look up the most common Google search term in the UK on the Friday after the Brexit vote, you'll find it's "What is the EU?".
If the plebiscite was run again, it is likely to be a completely different result again. Right now, London, Scotland and Ireland seem to strongly want to remain.
I can understand why the Brexiteers are running another large campaign now showing "how good the economy is" and don't succumb to "project fear".
Are you really sure the plebiscite was a reflection of the will of the people, or the fear of the people?
Never underestimate the power of Xenophobia to control a populace.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I don't know about where you live
The UK.
, but where I live, this simply isn't true
Well, that's nice, but this Article is about the UK leaving the EU, so UK legislation is really the only legislation of relevance.
We have these things called voter referendums. If somebody can get enough signatures, they can insert items on to the ballot.
We don't.
The only reason your response has any legitimacy
It's legetimate because that's literally what the law says.
claim of wanting a plan in place. But this again falls into a point of potentially undermining the democratic process.
I don't see how. The referendum told the government the voters want to leave. It didn't say "jump immediately with no plan and no scrutiny". Hell, apparently Nissan motors knows more about the Government's plan than parliament does. If *that* doesn't undermine the democratic process than I don't know what does.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm not presuming to talk for everybody, but personally, if that's what the constitution demands, then yes.
We do not have a constitution in the UK just laws and tradition. Since we entered the EU by parliament passing laws it takes parliament to repeal those same laws. It is just common sense. The reason the brexiteers are so paniced by this is because the majority for brexit was very slim and they are worried that any other referendum or vote will show that people have changed their mind.
This is why major changes to the fabric of a country are usually required to pass a far higher hurdle than merely 50% of the voters. You need a convincing margin to persuade those voting for the status quo to accept that the will of the people really has changed and that this is not a statistical blip fed by lies. Nobody is at all convinced that a second referendum, even at 50/50, would yield the same result now that the horrendous lies the leave campaign made have been exposed for what they were which happened within hours of the win.
Even worse was the fact that 2 million British citizens living abroad were excluded from the vote and many of them were enjoying the benefits of EU membership and so extremely likely to vote for remain. So the first vote was not even democratic since it excluded many of the citizens who are most directly affected by the results of the decision and since the victory margin was only 1.4 million this could easily have reversed the decision.
So you'll accept the result of the vote.... just as long as you win.
To put it in a US election context would you accept the results of the US election if 10 million US citizens in a demographic group who were very likely to vote in support of your favourite candidate were excluded from having a vote and the victory margin of the winner was 6 million votes? (although I know the actual number of votes is not actually relevant in the US system).
This is exactly what happen with the referendum: 2 million British citizens (which if you scale the from a population of 60M to 300M is equivalent to 10 million US citizens) were denied a vote because they live abroad. Many of them live in the EU enjoying the benefits of membership and so were extremely likely to vote remain.
If 10 million US republicans (or 10M democrats) were denied a vote would you happily sit by and accept the results of the election? I very much doubt it so why should we accept it in the UK? It might have been legal but it was certainly not democratic.
Britain isn't raping the world of its resources anymore so it has nothing.
It is very likely that the UK economy will suffer in the short and probably medium term due to Brexit-related changes and the uncertainty while those changes are worked out. In the long term, the economic implications aren't so clear and could be more favourable.
However, the idea that Britain has nothing of value to offer in its own right is just silly. It's a nation with more than 60 million relatively wealthy and relatively well-educated people. It has world class academic and research institutions. It is a global business and finance hub with geographic and linguistic advantages. It has several major industries contributing to its economy beyond the high profile ones like financial services. It is completely implausible that all of this will be catastrophically undermined, even if it takes a long time post-Brexit to sort out new international agreements.
After all, the UK also trades with other nations outside the EU, accepts people from and sends people to other nations around the world, and so on. It already does more trade with non-EU partners than EU ones, and the gap is widening. If the adults sort out the post-Brexit arrangements between the UK and EU, there will still be some form of mutually beneficial trading relationships there, even if they are on somewhat different terms. If the petulant children who seem to have been running the show lately on both sides of the Channel get to call the shots, we will probably wind up with some sort of very hard Brexit. In that case, it seems more likely that the UK will start to rebalance its economy and diplomacy in favour of more trade with non-EU partners, but there is a lot of room to manoeuvre there if you're free of the EU customs union and the like, so that will probably also work out OK in the long term though it may be a much rougher ride for a few years first.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.