A few more (random-ish) thoughts on the machinations behind all the mess of Brexit.

1. First of all let’s be clear where I’m coming from. At this point I do not care about whether the referendum result is right or not. While I would prefer to remain in the EU, the dice have been thrown and we are where we are. My interest now is a (forensic) understanding of what can, should and will happen especially from a legal and constitutional perspective. I am not an expert in this; I rely on those who are, which is why I have been (and will continue to) try to represent the position as objectively as possible based on the reports available to me. I am trying to avoid speculation and wishful thinking.
2. Contrary to my previous understanding, legal opinion seems divided as to whether the executive (ie. ministers) can serve notice under TEU Article 50, or whether to do so would require the active advance agreement of parliament via an Act. It all seems to boil down to how you view the use and the reach of prerogative powers by the executive.
   Head of Legal argues that the executive have the prerogative powers. Constitutional lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC and perhaps our top expert public lawyer David Pannick QC [paywall] disagree.
3. Pace many politicians and commentators, we appear to be in a very weak bargaining position on the exit deal. It seems to me that the EU hold all the chips, bar one.
   The only chip we hold is the timing of the starting gun.
   The EU hold all the other chips.
   • They can (as they have said they will) decline to enter into informal pre-negotiations.
   • They can continue to arm-twist the UK into issuing a notification under Article 50, although as Jack of Kent and others have pointed out they cannot do anything at law to force this to happen.
   • The EU are in a position to dictate the terms of the deal. What we want is irrelevant; it is all about what they’re prepared to offer; they can say “this is the deal, like it or lump it” because if we don’t agree then exit happens automatically anyway even without a deal. Moreover they have no reason to be overly benevolent towards the UK – apart from securing their own trade position (which they can do by offering membership of the EEA at great cost to us) they have no need to be benevolent.
   • Notice too that the formal exit negotiating period (two years or whatever it turns out to be) allows only for negotiating the exit deal (ie. transition arrangements). It says nothing about what deals might be done on the post-exit arrangements, for example by offering the UK membership of EEA. And the EU have said that the exit deal negotiations are unlikely to include anything on post-exit trade deals which would have to be agreed separately post-exit.
   • Once Article 50 has been invoked there appears to be no way to cancel the process; everyone seems to agree that once triggered we must and will cease to be an EU member. Of course we could then apply to rejoin, but what draconian terms might we be offered?
   • And once we’re out, all bets are off. We have to negotiate completely new deals on just about everything and again from a relatively weak bargaining position.
4. Do we need to trigger Article 50 or can we leave some other way? Essentially, no, Article 50 is the only accessible exit procedure. Again see Head of Legal.
5. There seems to be growing opinion that neither Scotland nor Northern Ireland (both of whom voted to remain in the EU) can block the UK from leaving if Westminster is determined to do so. This is nicely summarised over at Legal Business.
6. Legal Business also has an interesting discussion about the duty of an MP being to vote with his/her conscience rather than trying to reflect the whimsy of their constituents’ desires. The conclusion is that the constitutional principle upon which our parliamentary democracy is based is that MPs betray their constituents if they vote against their consciences (they are representatives not mandated delegates) — which is in turn based on this wonderful passage from Edmund Burke’s speech to the electors of Bristol in 1774:
   

   It ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion …
   To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience, these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

   However, again, not everyone agrees with this stance with many of the opinion that an MP is required to reflect the majority wishes of his/her constituents.

More snippets when there is anything useful. This one could run and run!

I want my country back
This is the constant refrain of the collection of spivs and barrow-boys who are hectoring us to vote to leave the EU.
And which of us wouldn’t agree?
I certainly would like my country back. But not the country of the “good old days” — formerly known as “these trying times” — as so well hammed up by AA Gill in last weekend’s Sunday Times [no link to the original as it’s paywalled, but the text has been posted on Facebook].
What I want is a country of sanity.
A country without gratuitous violence and sexual abuse.
A country where we all treat everyone as an equal …
… and other people as we would wish to be treated ourselves.
A country which is not run by self-serving, sleazy, megalomaniacs.
A country where there is a right to privacy, but also transparent & honest government …
… a right to free education up to and including university first degree level …
… a right to properly funded, excellent healthcare, free at the point of use, for all.
A society without corporate greed and unnecessary obsolescence.
A country which cares more for the environment than it does for corporate profit.
A country without a “me, me, me” “now, now, now” culture of instant gratification and ever mounting personal debt.
A country where sexuality, nudity and “soft drug” use are normalised, not marginalised and criminalised.
A country where (like Bhutan) Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product as the measure of success.
I don’t care about the golden days of the Hovis bread adverts, when all men wore hats and ties, beer was 2p a pint, and we all lived in hovels with a privvy at the bottom of the yard. I’m not asking for them to return. And I’m not asking for Utopia.
I’m quite content to take a modern society with modern conveniences. I just believe we have the balance completely wrong.
And it is this lack of balance which is basically screwing us.
Unfortunately we are not going to even think about this, let alone get anywhere near it, with the present set of political lizards, whether they’re in parliament & local government or whether they’re journalists, commentators or other media hangers-on. There are just too many entrenched attitudes and vested interests. Turkeys vote neither for Christmas nor Thanksgiving.
We aren’t going to get it either by voting to leave the EU or remain in the EU. In this sense the EU referendum is as pointless and meaningless as it is tedious and divisive.
No, the only way we are going to achieve this is by a complete paradigm shift. A paradigm shift that happens to the whole country, not just a few intelligent idiots like me. It has to be a vision of the majority. A vision which the majority can find a way to implement in our governance structures. A vision which we, the people, can make stick.
I don’t know how we do this. I don’t even know how we start to do this. I really don’t.
But I do know that this is what we desperately need.

I’m beginning to get despondent — no, let’s have this right, I’m now getting ever more deeply despondent — about the EU Referendum on 23 June.
I’m worried that the great British public will vote to LEAVE the EU. They certainly will if the current opinion polls are anything to go by as most seem to be showing LEAVE several points ahead with relatively few undecided voters. Typically the polls I’ve seen in the last week seem to be showing roughly REMAIN on 42% and LEAVE on 44%.
What deepened my worries is the state of mind of the “unthinking masses”. There’s a group on Facebook for the town where I grew up — a town now predominantly populated by people I can only best describe as “Essex chavs” (although that does do an injustice to many). Someone bravely put a poll on the Facebook group asking what people would vote. When I looked a few minutes ago the figures were REMAIN 28, LEAVE 158.
WHAT! Yes, that’s right, almost 6:1 in favour of LEAVE. I find that really scary because it implies that the LEAVE campaign’s fear-mongering, mostly on immigration, has got through to the minds of the less critical masses.
I fear that Joe Public is going to vote according to his tribal and xenophobic, Daily Mail, mindset — just as in many other things he (and she) will always vote with their wallet. Even many immigrants, and children of immigrants, are saying they’ll vote LEAVE because of immigration.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m OK with a LEAVE vote as long as it is based on some concrete foundations. However I know that Joe Public doesn’t work that way; he votes according to his fears and predilections, not because of good logic. Remember the old research which says that 5% of people can think and do; 5% of people cannot think; the other 90% can thing but just can’t be bothered — and that is partly because they have never been properly taught to do so.
It is going to take an awful lot of thinking citizens to overcome odds like that.
Part of the problem is that people cannot grasp that this whole thing is a big gamble; but a gamble where no-one knows what any of the odds are! This was summed up a couple of days ago by Martin Lewis of moneysavingexpert.com under the title How to vote in the EU referendum. His article is quite nicely balanced; Lewis points out the good and the bad with the EU. Here are a few key snippets:

It’s the biggest consumer decision any of us will ever make. It affects our economy, foreign policy, immigration policy, security and sovereignty. Our vote on whether the UK should leave the EU will reverberate through our lifetimes, and those of our children and grandchildren.
… … …
My mailbag’s been drowning with questions and concerns. The biggest being: “Please just tell us the facts, what’ll happen if we leave?” I’m sorry, but the most important thing to understand is: there are no facts about what happens next.
Anyone who tells you they KNOW what’ll happen if we leave the EU is a liar. Predicting exact numbers for economic, immigration or house price change is nonsense. What’s proposed is unprecedented. All the studies, models and hypotheses are based on assumptions — that’s guesstimate and hope.

Oh, and that applies equally to both sides of the debate! There are no facts; just guesses.
Lewis goes on to recommend that we “do some reading on useful independent sites that run through the issues” and suggests we start with The UK in a Changing Europe which is run by King’s College, London and pools balanced articles from all sides.
He then, quite rightly, points out …

… for most people this comes down to a risk assessment.
A vote for Brexit is unquestionably economically riskier than a vote to remain. Yet don’t automatically read risk as a bad thing. It simply means there’s more uncertainty …
Leaving the EU risks us being left on the sidelines …
Or we could in the long run become a nimble low-tax, low-regulation, tiger economy …
The likely truth is of course somewhere between the two. But most independent analysis suggests Brexit will be detrimental to the economy.
… … …
The volume of uncertainty means the only way to make the right decision is based on your political attitude to the EU, your gut instinct, and how risk-averse you are on each area that matters to you.

All I would say is please do this consciously, after carefully weighing the options, and don’t necessarily go just with your gut feelings (important though they are). In the words of Frank Zappa “a mind is like a parachute — it doesn’t work if it is not open“.
I happen to think that on balance leaving the EU would be the worse option — and heaven knows there’s so much about the EU I don’t like. But I could be wrong. We all could be wrong. As with all things there is no “RIGHT” answer.
And remember, again as Lewis comments, “the future is always a journey” but the path is crazy paving and you lay it yourself as you go along.
Good luck! We’re all going to need it whichever path we take.