The UK supreme court on Tuesday ruled, 8-3, that the government could not set in motion the process to leave the EU without parliamentary oversight and vote. And yet, fearing that pro-EU members of parliament might delay the process, Prime Minister Theresa May asserted that parliamentary debate wasn’t going to be necessary. Inevitably, there was a legal challenge; unsurprisingly the government lost, first before a smaller bench, and this week, at the supreme court. Funnily enough, the government can challenge the ruling before the European court, but that irony would be too much even for silver-tongued politicians who championed Brexit to make British institutions sovereign. The supreme court sided with the government—that the devolved parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not have a veto power over whatever the UK parliament decides.

Source: Mint January 25, 2017 20:40 UTC