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Originally Posted by Chris
Not entirely accurate. Parliament isn’t answerable to a written constitution, interpreted by a Supreme Court. If it has any duty to intervene then it could be construed as a moral duty only, not a legal one.
The issue here is that parliament is sovereign, the only limitation being that it cannot bind its successors by any decision it takes. We don’t have an act of Parliament describing the authority or otherwise of a referendum, and even if we did, such a need act could not prevent Parliament from overriding it.
Referendums are alien to our evolving, uncodified constitution so its not surprising that there is this tension around the authority vested in them. What we do have, however, in the absence of a written constitution, is a very powerful sense of precedent and convention. Parliament is not, and cannot be, bound by any law or referendum result, in any legal sense, but the political power behind the referendum result, granted it by an act of Parliament and by the actions of our politicians before, during and after the vote, is difficult to resist.
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You are right of course, a moral duty if not a legal one. Referenda have always been avoided wherever possible because they lead to situations like this.
If Lemmings voted to leap over a small gap that they were promised was just small and easy to cross, are you then duty bound to at least ask them, once you all realise that there is indeed a cliff there instead, to consider their decision again? Or do you just watch them jump according to their original decision? The bad news is that they have tied themselves to you!