As the dust settles after the UK vote to leave the EU, lawyers are picking over the landscape and legal opinions are emerging as to how the UK's departure from the European Union might be slowed or even stopped.
They fall into three main areas:
-The operation of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty
-A Scottish "block"
-A second national referendum
As I see it, there are several ways in which this madness could, plausibly, still be prevented. Although there is not much mood in Parliament right now to block it or hold a second referendum, even Michael "twerpface" Gove (who, unlike Boris, is a true Euroskeptic) is saying he wouldn't trigger A50 until he was ready. That means we have several months at least for things to change. And at the rate at which things are currently changing, stopping Brexit is beginning to seem less and less like wishful thinking.
A Scottish block, even if it were legally possibly, wouldn't work. That would probably alienate voters as much as humanly possible. But a cross-party decision by MPs from all countries to block legislation might have a chance of not provoking a constitutional catastrophe (we're already deep into the "crisis" stage), if there was a clear public mood for it. With several months of this to go, there's a very real chance that could develop.
If the petition grew to show a clear majority of the electorate now favoured Remain, that might be tantamount to the revolution and might possibly trigger the unthinkable. But four million is a long way off that.
I think they're not giving it due credit, it's by far and away the most successful e-petition. It's not that people don't care about various other issues, it's simply that they don't sign e-petitions. The key factor is how many people signing it are disgruntled Leave voters who are now feeling lied to, or those who inexplicably insist on using referendums as a protest votes ("What would you like for dinner, sausages or roast turkey ?", "No thanks I'll have the dog food".... "Well, you asked for it...").
Possibly the most likely option is a snap general election. Although currently almost all bets are off, I can't imagine this not happening in the highly likely event of new leaders of both Labour and the Tories in the next few weeks/months (Corbyn is really shooting himself in the feet by refusing to leave, he's damaging his reputation as a man of honour at this point). If the campaign was based on a promise to prevent Brexit, that would probably satisfy enough people that a second referendum would not be likely.
But who knows, right now it looks just as plausible that the Monster Raving Loony party will sweep to victory.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-uk-leaves-the-eu-36671629
Can Trump be stopped? A simple solution, as always, is to move to Canada.
ReplyDeleteWell the election cycle just lost one populist blonde with mad hair, so there's hope for 'murica yet.
ReplyDeleteI've a suspicion that the reason Corbyn hasn't gone is because he's known since the day he was elected leader that 80% of the parliamentary party had no confidence in him. There's also a pretty good chance he'll win in the membership again if he's on the ballot - but he has to stay leader for that to happen as he won't get the required number of nominations from MPs.
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty much what Kinnock said on yesterday's Andrew Marr show. The party constitution says in no uncertain terms that a member has to have the backing of at least 20% of the MPs, which Corbyn clearly does not. He might win the leadership election, but he'd never make it onto the ballot in the first place.
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