Post-referendum situation is looking increasingly undemocratic and unconstitutional

If Labour gets a half-way decent leader in place, the Tories are toast at the next election anyway.

I don't think Article 50 will be invoked until there is a clear picture of what the UK is going to 'get'. I don't believe that Theresa May will rush to invoke it, despite any backbiting or aggression that comes her way from UKIP or the headbangers on her backbench. There will be a timetable set, six months for negotiations or something like that.

Exactly.

The left thinks it knows best and the voters are wrong you see.

That is what it amounts to at bottom when you strip out the legal and constitutional antics referred to in this thread..

And that is why the Labour Party speaks for no-one nowadays. They thought they knew best and their own voters were wrong.

It will be interesting to see how this new "Progressive" party of virtue signalling London luvvies everyone is talking about does against UKIP under a new leader in the North and West Midlands and working class Wales.

Progressive but not speaking for the poor....

In a democracy, we listen to the people. We would call it undemocratic to ignore the results of a general election and likewise, I believe it would be undemocratic to ignore the results of this referendum.

There's going to be a major legal challenge on that - doubtless it will go all the way to the Supreme Court.

One thing people are also currently overlooking is that the European Court might rule the process invalid and it also has to pass through the EU Parliament, although presumably they won't obstruct.

Parliament nowadays has to approve wars, even 'small' ones, like the bombing of ISIL targets in Syria.

Yet the retiring Cameron position is to put the Cabinet Secretary in charge of it and carry it out essentially in secret.

Parliament must, must be the approving chamber before Article 50 can be invoked. Yet many in the Tory Party are acting as though this is already a done deal.

When Theresa May comes in to office, she must state right away that this will eventually go to Parliament and put back to the people if necessary.

If she doesn't say this, effectively, we will all know that our constitution as it stands has come to an end and British democracy is dead. The natural recourse of the people in that situation is insurrection and, if necessary, civil war.

It wasn't Merkel, she's been conciliatory. Juncker can rant all he likes, in the end it's Germany that decides with Hollande and he's also going to want it to be smooth.

Then it was a commissioner, isn't it odd how it's the commissioners who have nothing to do with the negotiations in any functional way that are saying we can't do anything rather than the parliament and the council?

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I wonder if there is a sense that because there is a democratic mandate behind leaving many of the legal challenges will simply be waved off. If the courts are all going to rule it needs to go through a parliamentary body, and it is guaranteed it will pass through with flying colours, is there any point going through the motions? We may see a consensus of there is no point, so why bother going through with a formality.

Of course a cynic might point out, if legal concerns can be so easily trumped by "democratic will" is our system of checks and balances being undermined?

What's being asked for is that we follow the British constitutional arrangements and put it to Parliament now. The UK is not a country of binding referendums and there was nothing in the Referendum Act that made it binding.

It's actually profoundly undemocratic to argue otherwise, as it ignores the law.

We are either a country of laws, or else we are a comic dictatorship of right wing Tories and extra-parliamentary UKIP racists and headbangers.

Many of us don't want to live in a country where the law is so deeply abused by a self-serving and self-satisfied extreme political faction serving the interests of oligarchs.

Cameron is against putting it there. He's a Leaver, you know.

I've never said the EU is perfect. To some extent, the role of Commissioners has been reduced in recent years as the powers of the Parliament and the Council have been increased and I suspect sometimes they are trying to reclaim it. Of course they have something to do with it, but the decisions rest as always with the nation states and that hasn't changed. This is one of the Big Lies that UKIP and right wing Tories have circulated for years about the EU - that the bureaucrats are in charge. It just isn't true, although some of the latter might wish it was.

Leaving the EU involves overruling an act of parliament, something the government cannot do. Article 50 has to be invoked inline with the constitutional requirements of the UK, so simply invoking it may not be legally valid.

No it is actually profoundly undemocratic to argue that a 52% majority on a more than 72% turnout should be overturned by a few unelected left wing lawyers.

Constitutionally, wouldn't we need a referendum with 80% turnout and a 60% vote one way to invoke article 50?

Constitutionally, wouldn't we need a referendum with 80% turnout and a 60% vote one way to invoke article 50?

Constitutionally, wouldn't we need a referendum with 80% turnout and a 60% vote one way to invoke article 50?

No, but most referenda do have rules like that - it should have required a 75% turnout and more than 60% in favour for such a crucial decision. Leaving it, as the act did, to a majority of 1 is either scarily casual of the government with Britain's future, or else points to rigging, which is far more likely.