Apparently, the
Prime Minister is planning to compare Parliament blocking or changing the nature of Brexit with the
referendum on devolution in Wales in her speech later today, asking people to “Imagine if an anti-devolution House of
Commons had said to the people of Scotland or Wales that despite voting in
favour of a devolved legislature, Parliament knew better and would overrule
them. Or else force them to vote again”.
But the scenario
she presents is not one where a country’s parliament over-rules the result of a
consultative referendum held in that country, but rather one where
parliamentarians from one country over-rule the people of another, which is
quite a different thing.
Parliamentarians from England over-ruling the expressed wish of the
Scottish electorate for devolution would, as she says, be unacceptable - although she seems to have no qualms whatsoever about the idea that
parliamentarians from England should over-rule Scottish wishes on Brexit. Neither, as we saw in relation to the Brexit
legislation clawing back powers from Wales and Scotland, does she see anything
wrong with over-ruling the wishes of the Welsh and Scottish electorates on the details of devolution when it
suits her.
One obvious flaw
in her argument, of course, is that an “anti-devolution
House of Commons” would never have legislated for a referendum on
devolution in the first place – indeed, anti-devolution members of parliament
did their utmost to prevent the question being put at all. And we all know that the nature of “devolution”
under the supremacist idea of sovereignty which underpins Westminster is that the
UK Parliament has the absolute right to change the powers of the National
Assembly any time it so wishes, as it has already done in relation to Brexit.
The second
obvious flaw is that after the first referendum on devolution to Scotland and
Wales, parliament legislated for a second when it became clear that opinion had
changed; exactly what she is so strongly opposing in relation to Brexit. Admittedly, there was a gap of 18 years rather
than 3 between the 1979 vote and the one in 1997, but the principle and precedent
for holding another vote if opinion appears to have changed is clear enough. Setting an arbitrary time limit somewhere
between 3 years and 18 is just that, arbitrary.
The principle to be considered can only be whether there is sufficient
evidence to suggest that a decision taken today in different circumstances
might lead to a different result, especially when an overwhelming majority of
parliamentarians believe that implementing the original decision would be an
unprecedented act of self-harm.
As a result of
the utter folly of the Prime Minister herself in calling an unnecessary election
in 2017, the parliament which we have today is not the parliament which
legislated for the original Brexit referendum in 2016; and it is a key tenet of
the UK constitution that no parliament can hind its successors. There is nothing unconstitutional or
undemocratic about a new parliament taking a different view on an issue – indeed,
if there were, there would be little point in holding an election.
A more relevant
argument is that both the largest parties in the House of Commons fought the election
on a manifesto committing them to implement Brexit, and that failing to do so
is a breach of faith with the electorate.
That is a valid argument, and a
good reason why it would be wrong for parliament to simply cancel Brexit and
ignore the result of the referendum; but it surely can’t compel legislators to
simply plough ahead when, in the light of additional facts, they come to see
that what they promised is undeliverable in the form in which they promised it.
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