Is consensus growing for a Parliament vote on Brexit?

British Prime Minister Theresa May wants to preserve control over the terms of the Brexit from a Parliament divided between hardliners and those who never wanted to leave the EU.

|
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP file
This is a Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016 file photo of Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a press statement with Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos at 10 Downing Street in London.

Three top members of Britain's ruling Conservative Party are calling on Prime Minister Theresa May to drop her legal appeal of an earlier court decision and agree to consult Parliament on the details of the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union.

Ms. May has argued that her government has the right to trigger Article 50, by which the UK would officially begin its withdrawal, on its own. The three Conservatives — a former solicitor general, a former attorney general, and the former head of Brexit preparations — say she needs to let Parliament have a vote, and get on with the preparations.

Oliver Letwin, the former Brexit-preparation head, told the BBC on Saturday that going to Parliament with a "fast and tightly timetabled and constrained bill" would allow the government to kick off the process without taking control of the details out of the hands of government ministers. Otherwise, he said, they face the risk of letting Parliament have a voice in the negotiations, as the Supreme Court could decide to grant veto powers or other negotiating rights to lawmakers outside of the government.

All three agreed that Ms. May’s chances of winning the Supreme Court appeal of an earlier court decision were low.

“That way you avoid an unnecessary legal row, you avoid a lot of unnecessary expense, but you also avoid an opportunity for ill-motivated people to attack the judiciary, to misconstrue the motives of both parties to the lawsuit, and you provide certainty,” Edward Garnier, the former solicitor general, told the BBC. 

The growing pressure from within Ms. May’s own party to seek Parliament’s consent highlights an unusual convergence of interest between the leftist opposition and the hardline pro-Brexiters: while the government wants to keep an iron grip over the negotiations’ details, in part to box out influence from the leftist opposition, many pro-Brexit members of the body suspect that the government will water down the terms. And many of them have demanded that Parliament weigh in on the departure from the EU – for them its a means of recapturing the sovereignty of Parliament.

“I and many others did not exercise our vote in the referendum so as to restore the sovereignty of this parliament only to see what we regarded as the tyranny of the European Union replaced by that of a government that apparently wishes to ignore the views of the house on the most important issue facing the nation,” declared one pro-Leave Conservative, Stephen Phillips, in October. The government, he added, was pushing to negotiate in a way that was  “fundamentally undemocratic, unconstitutional and cuts across the rights and privileges of the legislature,” according to the Guardian.

Other hardliners have beat a different drum: warning that the government must not change course and decide not to invoke Article 50, after all. 

“I now fear every attempt will be made to block or delay triggering Article 50,” wrote then-Ukip leader Nigel Farage after the High Court ruled on Nov. 3 that May’s government could not do so on its own. "They have no idea level of public anger they will provoke."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Is consensus growing for a Parliament vote on Brexit?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2016/1119/Is-consensus-growing-for-a-Parliament-vote-on-Brexit
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe