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Some thoughts on the argument that revoking Art 50 and staying in the EU now would in some way be anti-democratic. 1/
The June 2016 referendum result was advisory but not binding. Some remainers wished for it to be ignored or overturned in another referendum but most accepted that the government now had to find a way to leave the EU.2/
As is often pointed out this was confirmed in the vote on Article 50 and the manifestoes of the major parties in the 2017 general election. 3/
The Withdrawal Agreement negotiated with the EU would have seen the UK leave the EU on the planned date of 29 March 2019. The WA was not out of line with the sort of arrangement anticipated from the start. 4/
During the transition the next stages would need to be negotiated and a number of possible outcomes were possible. In law and in practice we would be exiting the EU. 5/
The WA therefore honoured the referendum result, met the A50 deadline and respected manifesto commitments. It involved trade-offs, as was inevitable, and so plenty of reasons to raise objections. But at least the departure would have been relatively orderly. 6/
At this point Parliament in its ‘meaningful vote’ rejected the opportunity given to it by the executive to exit the EU in line with the referendum result. 7/
Another opportunity may arise in the next few days but at this stage it is hard to imagine a substantively different WA. The ‘wiggle room’ lies more in the political direction which will govern the next stages and is already largely aspirational. 8/
In rejecting the WA, Parliament has asserted its right to interpret the Referendum result as it chooses in line with views about how if at all Brexit can best be achieved in line with the national interest. 9/
As a believer in parliamentary democracy I am fine with this but it means we have now moved beyond the question of respecting the 2016 result or the 2017 election. 10/
We are in this state of affairs because a significant chunk of the Leave camp decided that a disorderly exit was preferable to an orderly exit./11
They argued that the break would therefore be cleaner and that perhaps the threat to move into a chaotic situation would give us an increment of negotiating leverage over the EU, who would be suffering too. /12
While no withdrawal agreement is the default position, and so may happen, there is no Parliamentary majority to support it. 13/
If the Leave camp had not been split and voted together for the negotiated WA we would now be preparing to leave the EU. If we now end up staying those hard-line Brexiteers looking for someone to blame for dishonouring the referendum result should look in the mirror. End/
