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Parliament must vote on whether the UK can start the process of leaving the EU, the High Court has ruled.
This means the government cannot trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - beginning formal exit negotiations with the EU - on its own.
Theresa May says the referendum - and existing ministerial powers - mean MPs do not need to vote, but campaigners called this unconstitutional.
The government is appealing, with a further hearing expected next month.
- Rolling reaction to Article 50 court ruling
- Kuenssberg: Will this mean early election?
- The High Court's judgement in full
- Brexit: All you need to know
A statement is to be made to MPs on Monday but the prime minister's official spokesman said the government had "no intention of letting" the judgement "derail Article 50 or the timetable we have set out. We are determined to continue with our plan".
Plebiscites only count when plebes vote the way they're told.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday November 04 2016, @01:42PM
The democratically elected MPs in the sovereign parliament already did debate it, and voted to put the issue to the people to decide in a referendum. The issue is whether or not they should now get another go (and then maybe we get another go and so on and so forth).
It doesn't matter which way I voted or whether I want to remain or leave, I did NOT vote in a referendum that was billed as "A once in a generation decision" only to find out that I was merely voting for parliament to decide for us - parliament could have done that anyway and saved us all the bother.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday November 04 2016, @03:18PM
The democratically elected MPs in the sovereign parliament already did debate it, and voted to put the issue to the people to decide in a referendum.
However, they did not put anything in the legislation to invoke Article 50 in the event that Leave won (largely because they didn't expect Leave to win). Contrast this with the electoral reform referendum, where the legislation explicitly included the law that would come into effect if AV had won.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday November 04 2016, @04:40PM
The only reason for doing that would be if the government thought that legislation would not be necessary to invoke article 50... oh wait that is what they did believe. Many people seem to have forgotten that Cameron was going to invoke Article 50 on the morning after the vote, that was the expectation, including from other EU leaders and the european parliament. It was widely stated, and I believe that includes _before_ parliament voted on the referendum, yet no one objected then, no one said "hang on are you sure you can do that".
If he had done it before resigning, as he promised, instead of just cutting and running, would we still be arguing about whether he could do it while the rest of the EU sits waiting at the table while the clock runs down?