[roughbeast]

[/COLOR][QUOTE=Sephiroth;36024424]First, what is the State if not its people, the majority of which did not intend Parliament to misuse its sovereignty?

Second, what is your actual point? Support for the parliamentary games? Or just catching me out. I respect the latter!






A state is a nation or territory considered as an organised political community under one government. The people are an essential element of a state, but they are not synonymous with it.

Parliamentary sovereignty is a description of to what extent the Parliament of the United Kingdom does have absolute and unlimited power. The European Union Referendum Act 2015, approved on 14th December 2015, made legal provision for a consultative referendum to be held in the United Kingdom and Gibraltar, on whether it should remain a member state of the European Union or leave it. Parliament in so doing did not peel off some of its sovereignty and hand it to the people. This was a consultative referendum, that did not oblige the sitting government or Parliament to take that expressed public opinion through into legislation. Political reality and rash promises by some members of government, made it difficult to ignore public opinion, but Parliamentary sovereignty remained supreme. Parliament could decide whether to carry out the wishes of the 52% or not. Parliament decided to do so, when it voted to trigger Article 50, mostly because those parties who supported Remain were wary of consequences, come the next general election. As it happens, they should not have been afraid because public opinion has been at least 53% in favour of Remain for the last 18 months. If Parliament had held its nerve and voted against the trigger, history could have been so different.

Interestingly, if the referendum had been binding, and parliamentary sovereignty had been put out on loan to the people sic, the Electoral Commission has already announced that it would have had the power to nullify the result because of the industrial levels of electoral fraud by the leave campaign. As it is, it could only heavily fine the culprits. But, that is another story.

As for the conduct of Parliament, I stand by my view that the shadow government did not try to thwart the referendum result. Corbyn was adamant that we should try to leave with a customs union arrangement. Internal politics and the threat that Remainers might cease to support Labour, forced him to concede a confirmatory and binding referendum. This backfired, because Leave supporter's views had hardened in the direction of a No Deal Brexit. They wanted Brexit done, even though a Labour government on 13th December 2019 would have given business the certainty it needed to trade with the EU as before, i.e. frictionless trade, zero tariffs and JIT components and food stuffs.

The conduct of Parliament during this time was not a pretty sight, but it was parliamentary democracy as we have become accustomed to. Unfortunately, with the current model of political parties competing for power, policies and high principle often get brushed aside. Tory Remainers and Labour Leavers often voted against their conscience to tow the party line. Power became more important than principle. We can probably both agree that that is disgusting.

Ironically, we have just left a parliament, with its jurisdiction now 20 miles away from our coast, that has no party system and which more often than not votes purely on the merits of legislation. Now that is what parliamentary democracy should be like. Also ironic, is the fact that until the Tories came to power in 2010, the UK had voted for legislation that gained approval, 95% of the time. We made the EU what it is.