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from the we've-always-been-at-war-with-eurasia dept.
The UK Supreme Court has ruled that Parliament must vote on and approve of invoking Article 50 which triggers arrangements for leaving the European Union:
The Supreme Court has dismissed the government's appeal in a landmark case about Brexit, meaning Parliament will be required to give its approval before official talks on leaving the EU can begin. The ruling is a significant, although not totally unexpected, setback for Theresa May.
[...] The highest court in England and Wales has dismissed the government's argument that it has the power to begin official Brexit negotiations with the rest of the EU without Parliament's prior agreement. By a margin of eight to three, the 11 justices upheld November's High Court ruling which stated that it would be unlawful for the government to rely on executive powers known as the royal prerogative to implement the outcome of last year's referendum.
Also at NYT, WSJ, and The Guardian.
Previously: Brexit Court Defeat for UK Government
(Score: 5, Insightful) by theluggage on Wednesday January 25 2017, @08:32PM
The votes would've mattered if "remain" had won
Farage and UKIP would have gone on stirring - he was already planning his protests when he was interviewed early on referendum night and thought "Remain" was going to win. The much vaunted e-petiton demanding a new referendum was actually started before the referendum by a Leave supporter [huffingtonpost.co.uk] who assumed they would lose.
Anyway, if "remain" had won, the issue of putting it to parliament would be irrelevant, since it just meant doing nothing.
It's hard to imagine Parliament not following through here.
They will, unless there's an unprecedented outbreak of backbone-growing in parliament: the only significant group of MPs definitely voting against leaving are the Scottish Nationalist Party - and they can argue that the majority of Scottish voters backed remain in the referendum. They may be joined by a few Labour and Conservative rebels, but that's unlikely to swing it. At most, a few amendments will get tacked on, and voted down unless they're totally inane. The House of Lords could block or amend it - but parliament can always overrule the Lords, and any amendments they add should be worth considering because those unelected old geezers do actually have a shitload of legal and constitutional knowledge and experience between them.
But I'm American, so my understanding of politics in the UK is limited at best.
Main point here: the House of Commons is sovereign and has the vote that matters on most things. The PM's party usually has an absolute majority in the Commons, so usually gets her way unless any of her MPs have a sudden attack of principals - defeats for the government are a A Big Thing but they do happen. There are a limited number of "royal prerogative" powers that the PM can exercise on her own, signing treaties with foreign countries, for example. The PM thinks she can use these to send our Article 50 "resignation notice" to the EU. However, EU membership goes a lot deeper than the typical treaty and (despite what some people would like to think) Article 50 is irreversible, so invoking it would negate the prior Acts of Parliament that integrated the EU in UK law - so she's now been forced to do what she bloody well should have known to do in the first place, which is to submit a bill to parliament. Since she's got a Commons majority and support (albeit with a hint of "don't throw me into the briar patch") from the closet Brexiteer leading the main opposition, the only practical upshot will be that the issue gets properly and openly debated in parliament.
In the unlikely event that it gets rejected then the voters will get the opportunity to punish their elected representatives at the next General Election (which, in that case, could be sooner rather than later).