This is a bizarre interpretation of sovereignty. Parliament is supreme in the UK, and the UK is sovereign within the UK according to its own arrangements, but it does not and cannot bind any other entity, still less the EU, or obviate the basic principle of pacta sunt servanda.
"Sovereignty means everyone must give us whatever we want, anywhere, any time, without restriction, ever!"
Well, no. That's not what it means. Sovereignty includes choosing to bind oneself to agreements that one must follow, because pacta sunt servanda.
Well, no. That's not what it means. Sovereignty includes choosing to bind oneself to agreements that one must follow, because pacta sunt servanda.
Left and right both in the UK seem to think that to be sovereign means, in effect, that one could send in a gunboat free of any agreed restraint were it not that one chooses, in a lordly exercise of self-control and grace, not to do things that way just now.
That's not it, lads.
That's not it, lads.
Even in the barking-mad snake-pit of the world of Westphalian sovereignty, that led to the disaster whose end we commemorated last weekend, international agreements were negotiated and bound, without effect on sovereignty, because pacta sunt servanda.
And for someone whose stance on foreign policy is, in essence, to condemn and demand restraints on any pro-western country and ignore any anti-western country to now demand a hyper-Westphalian, "We get what we want unfettered" version of sovereignty is bizarre.
In summary: if, like many lawyers, you're into public law, legal philosophy, international law and history, Brexit will do your bulb in.
Addendum: @tcgriffin phrased it neatly - it's the confusion between a past hegemony and sovereignty that's at the root of much of this.
"Aut imperator aut nihil" leads to, well, nothing.
And this is an elegant, lucid restatement of it by Heseltine.
"Aut imperator aut nihil" leads to, well, nothing.
And this is an elegant, lucid restatement of it by Heseltine.
