Brexit in Westminster : ‘Content’, ‘Not-Content’

Abstract

Brexit has put under strain the subtle balance between government and Parliament at the core of the United Kingdom constitution largely based on conventions. It has led to a permanent confrontation between the minority Conservative government of Theresa May relying on a supply and confidence agreement with the Democratic Unionist party and Westminster stretching to its limits the adversarial nature of British parliamentary life. In an unprecedented way, it has also challenged the proceedings and usages of Parliament famously defined by Erskine May in the nineteenth century. With the (external) help of judges in the landmark Miller v. Secretary of State for Exiting the EU Supreme Court case (January 2017) reinstating Dicey’s view of parliamentary sovereignty, Parliament has reasserted its authority over the Brexit process and over government. In spite of the attempt of the latter to use the Crown prerogatives to trigger the country’s withdrawal notification without a parliamentary vote then to prorogue Westminster to bypass its opposition to a no-deal Brexit, Parliament has come out as a revitalised legislature. It started at the beginning of 2019 with the unprecedented selection by the Speaker of the House of Commons (John Bercow) of an amendment to a business motion by the former Attorney General Dominic Grieve imposing parliamentarians’ meaningful votes on the government’s Brexit deal. It then ended with an amendment from the Labour backbencher Hilary Benn and his Conservative counterpart Alistair Burt to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill on 17 July 2019 to make it more difficult for the successor of Theresa May to prorogue Parliament in order to force through a no-deal Brexit on 31 October 2019. Both the UK Parliament and the EU might come out reinvigorated in the end.