On 19/08/2019 20:12, Roger Hayter wrote:
No British Parliament has the power to bind the country irrevocably.
That is orthogonal to whether they can sign up for some pretty stiff
penalties potentially enforceable under international law (i.e. the will
of a significant number of important countries to enforce them) if a
future Parlament changes their mind.

Perhaps

Therefore they cannot cede sovereignty, only agree to follow another
party's decisions unless they later decide not to.

And yet they did. Yes, I agree that legally perhaps they were /ultra
vires/ to do that, and certainly a court action to that effect was
started but taken up by the public prosecutor and buried, but that is
what the Treaties of Maastricht and Lisbon *are*.

Whether or not we needed to invoke article 50 at all, or just repeal the
1972 act is also legally arguable. In the end we chose to be nice to the EU.

Who behaved as any common or garden psychopath does, rubbed their hands
in glee and took it as a sign of weakness.

As I said thee EU has always sidestepped direct rule by getting its
puppet governments to insitute legislation that accords with EU
directives, so they can say 'its a locally made law' and pretend to have
nothing to do with it.

This preserves the illusion of sovreignty.

And that is why we mirrored article 50 with other UK legilstaion so no
matter under which aegis, the result was the same. May slipped up a bit
with the extension and didn't precisely keep UK law in line with the
treaty obligations.

But that doesnt mean that international law is not sovereign over UK
law. It is. A treaty is always a bit of sovereignty ceded in some
sense.Ultimately you cede soverignty in terms of an international
treatuy but reserve the right to withdr\w from it.

Lisbon waa a treaaty where the right to withdraw was defined by article 50.


It is important that everyone is seen to follow the Law, no matter how
much skullduggery they are really up to.


--
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on
its shoes.