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Sunday, August 21, 2016

Jacob Rees-Mogg on the Brexit Referendum


It seems to me that the one area where referendums are absolutely right are on constitutional matters. Because the one thing Parliament can never do is give away its own power. That has to be returned entire to the electorate every five years. Within that five years there is discretion to act. But the power must be returned to the voters for each general election. And the problem with the European Union is that power has steadily eroded and been given away to unelected officials in Brussels.

....

If you take the view that sovereignty comes from the British people and is delegated to Parliament for five years, which is I think a pretty traditional view of parliamentary sovereignty, then you would agree, I think, that the one thing where the people must be consulted is when their absolute powers are given away or there is a fundamental change in the Constitution. And leaving the European Union is a fundamental constitutional change.

[end]

Seth

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethBTillman ( @SethBTillman )

My prior post: Seth Barrett Tillman, An Opportunity to Comment and Post at New Reform Club, The New Reform Club (Aug. 21, 2016, 5:32 AM)

1 comment:

Lawrence Serewicz said...

Jacob Rees Mogg is a clown. He jokes when he says the power is returned to the people. In this he is telling a lie or a funny story. The UK is not and never has been a popular sovereignty. There is no government of, by or, for the people. The government is Her Majesty's Government. The Crown is supposed to act in the public interest yet it often sees the Crown's interest determine the public interest. Even though it is not the limit, the Crown chooses to ignore it at all occasions.
Rees Mogg, is dishonest intellectually, when he says power is returned every 5 years to the people. What is returned to them? the ability to choose which person will represent the Crown to them for this parliament? Rees Mogg is intellectually dishonest for he will not explain why he takes a personal oath to the Queen and not to the law or the people. In the United States the oath is to the Constitution, the law. Moreover, the United States, unlike the UK, has a constiutional moment. The UK does not.
Finally, the brutal truth that Rees Mogg dances around like those people who try to explain why so many powerful people have been exempt from being convicted of child rape until they are dead, is that the UK is not founded on consent. It is founded on the force of arms. It is founded in coercion or an armistice between the Monarch and Parliament. One only need to note that the Queen reviews *her troops* for they swear a personal oath to protect her (not the UK, not the Crown, not the people) from all enemies. Parliament has no army, navy, police (save the sergeant at arms), or intelligence agency (this explains why the Police routinely spy on MPs without repercussion or constitutional concerns as occur in the United States), which makes it silly for it to bleat on about its "sovereignty". If it has sovereignty, why does it have to exercise the *royal* prerogative powers so often.