MPs, not all of them supporters of remaining in the EU, have started to mount a coherent challenge to the government’s approach to leaving. Good for them. The apparent determination to cut parliament out of any role in scrutinising the shape that the Brexit negotiations will take is wrong. And, as the big argument of the leave campaigners was the need to restore sovereignty to parliament or, as they snappily put it, to take back control, it is also absurd.
The Commons revolt is overdue. But hesitation is forgivable: there are unprecedented challenges in digesting the results of a referendum on a complex issue presented as a binary choice that ended up producing an outcome that directly contradicts majority opinion among MPs. But in their silence, the prime minister has decided that the result is best interpreted as a prescription for the kind of Brexit that, at least in the short and medium term, is likely to cost jobs and economic growth.
The courts will decide this week whether the government can trigger Article 50 on its own prerogative or whether parliament should have a vote. The government’s view that no vote is required is expected to be upheld. But that should not rule out the possibility of a vote in the Commons on the negotiating strategy – for example, on the relative roles of free movement of labour and access to the single market. Yet the Brexit minister David Davis, who had advocated a white paper on the government’s negotiating stance shortly before his appointment as the man in charge of the negotiations, made a statement to the Commons on Monday, that added nothing to the state of knowledge beyond repeating the government’s resistance to any Commons vote.
The sop to parliament is the passage of the so-called great repeal bill that, once withdrawal is complete, repatriates 40 years’ worth of EU legislation. MPs should fight this line by line: it allows ministers to decide, largely without parliamentary scrutiny, which laws will remain. The prime minister and Mr Davis insist that it will not reduce workers’ rights. But in a post-Brexit world, the landscape may look a lot more rugged than it does now. The government should consider that while the referendum result must be respected, negotiating withdrawal without reference to parliament will tarnish democracy too.
