Ah, Brexit. Remember the EU referendum? That rainy day at the end of June when it felt like the heavens had well and truly opened as dramatic portents of things to come. You could write a top marks GCSE English essay about the pathetic fallacy of it all.
It’s now been over two months since the results of our country’s giant vote on whether or not we should remain a part of Europe. That is long enough for it to start feeling like it didn’t really happen, however we voted we’ve all now consigned it to a dark corner in the great reservoir of our minds.
However, Brexit isn’t a memory. It’s still very much a reality. At some point, one way or another, our new government will have to go about the process of untangling this green and pleasant land from the behemoth that is the European Union once and for all.
Or, will they? David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, has admitted that Parliament could, in theory, block a full Brexit.
As he gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about whether or not new legislation would be needed to make Brexit happen he admitted that we will need new laws in order to have a clean break from the European Union. At present Britain is subject to multiple European laws and directives which will have to be removed and replaced to stop them being legally binding.
Davis also revealed that the House of Lords, where opposition peers outnumber Conservatives, could act to prevent a full Brexit from going through. However, he warned them not to do so and called on them to fall in line with the majority vote for Britain to leave the EU. However, in the weeks since Brexit several members of the House of lords, including Tory peers, have made it perfectly clear that they’re prepared to cause trouble.
The Brexit Secretary said: ‘The simple truth here is that what the Government is doing is carrying out the biggest mandate that’s ever been given to a government by the British people.’
‘So it’s a very, very, very clear mandate and I think the House of Lords would be quite unwise not to take that mandate seriously.’
All of this comes after the House of Commons Constitution Committee published a report earlier this week which stated that the Prime Minister should get approval from Parliament in its entirety before triggering Article 50.
The Government doesn’t seem to agree. Davis dismissed the idea of a second referendum, another election or a vote in Parliament and made it clear that they are treating the result of the referendum as final.
However you slice it a few things are coming across loud and clear about Brexit:
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Politicians can’t agree on anything. For instance, Davis is the Brexit Secretary and this week he has had to distance himself from another member of the Government - the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson. Why? Because Boris Johnson was on the Vote Leave team who pledged to spend £350 million more on the NHS a week if Britain left the EU. Davis had publically said that he ‘made no such pledge.’
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It’s now been months since the referendum and nobody has actually triggered Article 50, we’re still technically in the European Union.
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This is going to go on and on and on.
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Theresa May says ‘Brexit means Brexit’ but nobody seems to know exactly what that actually looks like. It will happen, we are told, but as to how and when nobody seems to know.
Glad we cleared all of that up.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.