Christopher Howarth’s Guide to Brexit: Don’t panic, Leavers. Britain’s going Out – however the Supreme Court rules today

Jan 24, 2017 by Jill

(Posted in the light of today’s Supreme Court Judgment)

by Christopher Howarth, Conservative Home:

Our Supreme Court is a curious creation. It is supreme yet, unlike its US counterpart, has no written constitution to limit its powers. Nor a legislature to confirm its appointments. Like most of the constitutional innovations of the last 20 years its creation was ill-conceived. Its exalted and unchecked role in interpreting often wooly European and Human Rights legislation is destabilising the traditional relationship between Parliament and Court. Winston Churchill once observed that “we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” In this case the removal of the Law Lords into a new grand building entirely separate from Parliament was instructive. As Lord Neuberger the President of the Supreme Court observed at the time: ”To change…the Law Lords into the Supreme Court as a result of what appears to have been a last-minute decision over a glass of whisky seems to me to verge on the frivolous.”

That is the court which will this morning hand down its decision as to whether the Government can exercise the Royal Prerogative of international relations to trigger Article 50, the EU’s exit clause. While their role in dispensing EU law is coming to an end, at some future date a Government may still wish to revisit Tony Blair’s frivolous constitutional vandalism, but it would be wrong to do so in reaction to one particular judgment – however perverse. So what might the verdict be?

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