Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
5 facts about the UK Supreme Court’s Brexit decision
5 facts about the UK Supreme Court’s Brexit decision
Dec 27, 2025 9:12 PM

This morning, the UK Supreme Court ruled that Brexit may not go forward unless Parliament votes to authorize withdrawal from the European Union, despite the fact that the motion won a national referendum last year. Here are five facts you need to know about British citizens’ attempt to reassert their sovereignty by leaving the Brussels-based international government body.

1. Brexit passed handily and remains popular in England. Parliament voted in June and December 2015 to allow for a national referendum on Brexit. Last June 23, approximately72 percentof UK voters took part in the election, voting 52 percent to 48 percent to leave the European Union –primarilyover the right to restrict immigration from the rest of the EU. A recent poll found that53 percentof Brits would support leaving the European Union regardless of the final exit agreement’s details.

2. The Supreme Court ruling does not halt or overrule Brexit. Today’s 8-3 ruling is a procedural issue, not a substantive one. The president of the UK Supreme Court, Lord David Neuberger, said, “The referendum is of great political significance, but the act of Parliament which established it did not say what should happen as a result.” Thus, Parliament must officially vote to trigger Article 50 of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, allowing member states to leave the EU. “The government cannot trigger Article 50” without an act of Parliament ordering it to do so, Lord Neuberger said. Opponents say this disregards the will of the people, while supporters call today’s decision a victory for parliamentary sovereignty.

3. The Conservative government will act swiftly – but the parliamentary process could greatly slow the process. Brexit Secretary David Davis said he will introduce a bill – possibly only one line long – in Parliament within days, and Prime Minister Theresa May stillexpectsArticle 50 to be triggered “by the end of March.” Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said that, while his party “will not frustrate the process,” he wants a vote on the final agreement in order to “prevent the Conservatives using Brexit to turn Britain into a bargain basement tax haven.” Staunch Remainers say that muscular opposition could stall Brexit for up totwo years,on top of two-year withdrawal process. Liberal Democrats and the Scottish government want a second national referendum after the final agreement is negotiated, a position favored by only26 percentof the British people. Fewer, only 12 percent, think Parliament should have final say.

4. Westminster doesn’t have to consult the “devolved” governments: Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. That’s good news for Brexit. While a majority of voters in England and WalesvotedLeave (53 percent each); Scotland (62 percent) and Northern Ireland (56 percent) voted to Remain. Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish government, has vowed tointroduce50 “serious and substantive” amendments to the Brexit bill to stall the process.

5. Virtually all Brits want to remain in the European single market, a massive free trade zone that includes both EU and non-EU member nations. A poll found90 percentof people, regardless of how they voted on Brexit, hoped to remain in the European Economic Area. However, the nation need not remain in the EU to enjoy that access. Three nations – Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein – are not part of the EU but enjoy access to the EEA single market as members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). A fourth EFTA member, Switzerland, has negotiated numerous bilateral trade agreements (Switzerland) granting most Swiss industries access to the EEA. In 2015, trade with the EU accounted for44 percentof UK exports (£223.3 billion) and 53 percent (£291.1 billion) of the UK’s imports.

/ Shutterstock)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Follow-Up on Climate Change at the Economist
About a month ago I posted some responses to the editorial position taken at the Economist. One of their claims was with regard to the Kyoto Protocol and that “European Union countries and Japan will probably hit their targets, even if Canada does not.” At the time I registered skepticism with respect to these estimates. Turns out my skepticism was well-founded. From Wired News: Between 1990 and 2004, emissions of all industrialized countries decreased by 3.3 percent, mostly because of...
Death of a Dictator
Otto Reich at NRO claims that Cuban tyrant Fidel Castro is dead, or soon will be. That has been suspected for some time, but Reich says that funeral arrangements are now definitely in the works. Cuban authorities are evidently modeling the funeral on that of Pope John Paul II, parison that Reich teases out in the rest of the article. One is inclined to say that the ing grandiose tributes to Castro are risible, but it is hard to laugh...
Patterns of Philanthropy
“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48 NIV). When Bank of America Philanthropic Management noticed that “the wealthiest 3% of American households responsible for nearly two-thirds of charitable giving,” it decided to study philanthropic giving. (The top 5% paid 54.4% of taxes in 2003.) Passed on by Don’t Tell the Donor, “Bank of America today released the initial results...
An Economist’s Report on Climate Change
In a missioned by the UK government, Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank, argues that the cost of waiting to take action to curb CO2 emissions will outpace other economic arguments against action on climate change. The BBC reports (HT: Slashdot) that Stern found “that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20%,” but that this opportunity cost for not taking action immediately could be offset by moving now: “Taking action now would cost...
The New Evangelical Role in the Public Square, Part 1
The role of evangelicals in the public square has been a major development in American life over the past twenty-five or thirty years. A recent spate of popular books has looked at this phenomenon very critically. The number of books from the political and religious left, arguing against the rise of the newer evangelical right, makes for a full shelf of books by now. Most of these popular and poorly written books sound like dire warnings about ing religious takeover...
What is Truth!
Hugh Hewitt interviewed Andrew Sullivan on the radio last week about Sullivan’s book, The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back. Discussing the value of various figures throughout history as moral heroes, Sullivan speaks of “the great question that Pilate asked, what is truth? The truth is not quite as easy and as simple as we sometimes think it is. And the truth about everything, the meaning of the whole universe, is something that is, by...
‘Truth is the Great Issue’
We’ve just posted the audio from Chuck Colson’s remarks at the Acton annual dinner in Grand Rapids on October 26. This link will take you there. “We are the people of the truth,” Colson told the more than 500 people assembled at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel. “We believe there is ultimate reality and we believe it is knowable. And that puts us up against our culture.” One of the nation’s most prominent evangelical Christians, Colson is founder of Prison...
Ghosts in Paper Houses
One thing that they do over at GetReligion is track “ghosts” in news stories. I think I found one this morning on the CBS Morning Show, and it’s fitting to talk about it given that today is Halloween. The piece was on the charitable work of a Houston policeman, Bob Decker, who founded the charity Paper Houses Across the Border (video here). As part of their “Heroes Among Us” series, based on profiles published in People magazine, CBS described Decker’s...
Love of God and the Free Market
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy will be holding a theological conference on the subject of “Economy: Love of God, Production, and the Free Market.” Taking place tomorrow (Tuesday), you can either follow it live or read the proceedings later at the dicastery’s web site. ...
CNN Poll: Broken Government
Data from a new CNN poll: “Queried about their views on the role of government, 54 percent of the 1,013 adults polled said they thought it was trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Only 37 percent said they thought the government should do more to solve the country’s problems.” These results follow a period in which the GOP has dominated both the executive and legislative branches at the federal level. During this...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved