Brexit and Parliamentary Supremacy

Commentary has been voluminous and at times breathless on the results of Brexit referendum and I have little to contribute on the immediate challenges of choosing a new Prime Minister, negotiating withdrawal, keeping The City competitive with Frankfurt, and the risk of Northern Ireland and Scotland seceding from the United Kingdom.

Financial markets are in turmoil.  Because the world economy is so dominated by finance, what happens on Wall Street does affect Main Street.  The turmoil will settle when the outcome of negotiations becomes more certain.  What financial markets hate more than anything else is uncertainty.

It is possible that other states on the continent may hold votes on continued membership.  My guess is that the next states will be Netherlands and Italy.  The vote in the U.K. was not a surprise to me.  Given that the UK was late joining the EC and joined to be part of the customs union (the EC, now EU, is a customs union, not an ordinary free trade area, which means that member states cannot make their own trade agreements with external states).  For Britain, complete surrender of sovereignty in the creation of a European superstate offends Britain’s democratic traditions.

The remain campaign claimed that leave is motivated by a reactionary portion of the electorate that pines for empire.  It is not empire, but the spirit of parliamentary sovereignty.  Britain does not have a separation of powers the way say the United States or Germany structures the government.  That the European Court of Justice is granted by treaty judicial supremacy (some claim that it has arrogated powers beyond its mandate in treaty), makes the EU incompatible with British tradition.

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