The news today is that the High Court has ruled that the legislation enabling Brexit needs to be passed by the House of Commons. The pound has recovered on the news but it doesn't seem to me that anything has really changed here. The Conservatives won an election on a manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on EU membership. They cannot now choose to ignore the result of that referendum and they are obliged to support its conclusion. The only way they can get out of this is to dissolve parliament and fight the election again on an anti-Brexit programme. Unfortunately for the country they show no sign of doing this and so Brexit it must be.
The Labour Party is not under the same absolute obligation as the Conservatives. They after all did not come up with this daft scheme. But even they cannot simply ignore the result. The Labour Party could have decided to not play ball with the referendum and to call on its supporters to stay at home. By participating they too have an obligation to respect the vote. They can choose to abstain but actively opposing Brexit would not be a democratic way to behave. I hope that they do in fact abstain, but the chances are whatever they do will displease many.
But the big losers here are Europhile Conservatives like my MP who has vocally opposed Brexit. It looks very much like he will have to march through the lobby to support a policy that he knows very well is contrary to the national interest. And next time out he'll have to stand having voted for a policy which by then will quite likely be about as popular as anthrax.
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