The European Court of Justice (ECJ), the highest court in the continental power bloc and one that the United Kingdom remains bound to obey until it fully removes itself from the European Union, is considering Tuesday a challenge by anti-Brexit politicians to allow them the right to cancel Brexit altogether.
The bid to go over the head of the British people, who voted to leave the European Union by a margin of over one million ballots in the 2016 referendum — the largest exercise in democracy in British history ever — is being led by a group of six Scottish politicians who argue that the Westminster Parliament should have the right to vote to stop Brexit without asking for permission from the rest of the European Union.
The case has gone to the ECJ because the so-called Article 50 process which Prime Minister Theresa May belatedly activated ten months after the referendum only deals with a country leaving the EU, not changing its mind halfway through.
The ECJ sat to hear the case for the first time Tuesday, but it could take several weeks for a decision to be reached — by which time the UK Parliament may have already voted to adopt or reject Theresa May’s controversial Brexit deal. Critics of her plan — including U.S. President Donald Trump — say the arrangement will be disadvantageous and will lead to no more than a Brexit in name only.
The politicians, who wish to claim the right to continue to be governed by a remote European Union bureaucratic elite by exempting themselves from the obligation to ask the European Union for the right to do so, are six Scottish members of Parliament, members of the European Parliament, and members of the Scottish Parliament.
Alyn Smith, a Scottish National (SNP) MP whose party wishes to express their nationalism by breaking Scotland away from the United Kingdom and then immediately join the European Union, a bloc which is even now asking member states to prepare to hand over their sovereignty to Brussels, said of the challenge: “On the verge of the most important vote in the U.K.’s recent history, many MPs are being pressured into believing that there is no alternative to no deal or May’s deal.”
Britain’s left-wing Guardian newspaper reports the remarks of the SNP’s Joanna Cherry, who said Tuesday: “Theresa May wants MPs to think the options are her deal or no deal at all, but even she has recently acknowledged there is a third option of no Brexit. We expect this case to establish as a matter of legal certainty that Brexit may be stopped altogether by revoking the article 50 notice, either with permission or unilaterally.
“The fact that the UK government has fought this case tooth and nail at considerable expense shows how desperate the PM is to prevent MPs having the certainty that Brexit can be stopped and that is the question on which the court of justice will now rule.”
The British government rejects the points raised by the court case as present policy is not to revoke the article 50 declaration that Britain intends to leave the European Union, making the whole exercise essentially hypothetical. This is despite Theresa May having cautioned in coded terms on several occasions that if the country fails to back her Brexit proposals, there could be no Brexit at all.
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook
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