The high court’s ruling that the government needs parliament’s approval before invoking article 50 has provoked roars of predictable outrage from the Brexit camp. Parliamentary sovereignty means that primary legislation, like the act that subordinated some UK law to Europe’s in 1972, cannot be overturned just on the government’s say so. Therefore the government cannot invoke article 50 without parliament’s authority. They agreed too that it was a matter only of how, not if, article 50 should be invoked. For that reason alone, the government is wrong to insist it is going to try anyway, a decision that will make it even harder to meet the prime minister’s pledge to trigger article 50 by the end of March.

Source: The Guardian November 03, 2016 20:03 UTC