Rarely can any court, never mind a Supreme Court, have laboured so diligently on a point of no consequence. But thanks to the contrivances of the Conservatives and the Labour Party, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom today reached a historic ruling which is likely to prove utterly irrelevant.
At stake was the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. The Supreme Court was tasked with deciding whether the government could invoke Article 50 alone – beginning the process which will lead to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union – or whether they would first need to obtain some form of consent from parliament.
The matter was first placed before the High Court last November, where three judges ruled in favour of parliament. However their ruling was widely condemned by politicians and the press, as Conservative and Labour MPs engaged in a populist rush to assert the narrow result of last June’s referendum, while the Daily Mail branded the judges ‘Enemies of the people’.
The government swiftly announced it would appeal the High Court ruling, sending the matter to the Supreme Court. Yet in December, just as the Supreme Court hearing commenced, Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, set about undermining its work. He contrived to get parliament to agree to a March deadline for the invocation of Article 50, in return for a few vague promises from the government regarding the publication of their Brexit negotiation strategy.
December’s vote was non-binding, but showed the extent of the official opposition’s compliance. It suggested that whatever happened in the Supreme Court, Labour were intent on helping the Conservatives to push ahead with Brexit regardless. Only the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party, and the solitary Green MP in the House of Commons have demanded proper parliamentary scrutiny, while highlighting the potentially hazardous ramifications of a so-called hard Brexit.
The Supreme Court did rule in the government’s favour in so far as it rejected the idea of a vote on Article 50 in each of the devolved assemblies. But reading out the judgement, Supreme Court President Lord Neuberger said:
‘By a majority of eight to three, the Supreme Court today rules that the government cannot trigger Article 50 without an act of Parliament authorising it to do so. Withdrawal effects a fundamental change by cutting off the source of EU law, as well as changing legal rights. The UK’s constitutional arrangements require such changes to be clearly authorised by parliament.’
As if to emphasise how little the ruling mattered, Brexit secretary David Davis praised the Supreme Court for their ‘sound judgment’ while promising a bill ‘within days’ that will quell the government’s obligations to parliament. The bill will be terse, and while it will offer scope for the tabling of amendments, it is expected to pass through the Commons in a matter of weeks, without interfering with the government’s March deadline.
