Euro Area

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Precedents can be unmade by the court who set it, or by a higher court. Statutes cannot be challenged in court. English judges simply do not have the constitutional power to do so, under any circumstances. They can only interpret them narrowly so that the scope of a statute is restricted. I admit I know almost nothing about equity; except that it's often used to dodge the limitations of common law.

Governments can ignore the opinion of the people (obviously, I can't count the times I've seen British people complain about it here), and in many cases rightly do so. If we decided every issue by referendum we wouldn't have enough tax money (taxes being unpopular) to cover a disproportionally large public sector (because expensive, high quality services are popular). Governments are accountable once - when they're up for reelection. They're under no legal or constitutional obligation to follow public opinion. It's risky to do so repeatedly, for obvious reasons.

In your case, your government - or rather, your parliament - has absolute freedom to do whatever the hell it pleases. There's the vague thing called "convention and custom" which can be violated, and there'd be no remedy. There are no written laws, no printed constitutions that limit what parliament can do. The only limit here is that Parliament can not bind itself to an irreversible reduction of power. And EU membership is reversable, though we don't have any real life examples of that - yet.

Governments are elected on manifestos though - every UK party offered a referendum on Europe prior to the last two elections, so the voters can't be accused of voting for the status quo.

I appreciate that you can't run everything via referenndum - but the signing of treaties and transfer of competencies are not "everything", they are a very specific thing.

[Kralizec]

Governments are elected on manifestos though - every UK party offered a referendum on Europe prior to the last two elections, so the voters can't be accused of voting for the status quo.

I appreciate that you can't run everything via referenndum - but the signing of treaties and transfer of competencies are not "everything", they are a very specific thing.

At the risk of sounding elitist: EU treaties are preceded by intricate, lenghty negotiations. While I think that every adult should be able to vote on his or her representatives, I don't think that the average bloke has either the intelligence or the knowledge to make an informed judgement about these treaties. Or any treaty at all, frankly. The Irish voted down the Lisbon treaty and only voted for it after they got promised all sorts of opt-outs and garantues. That is simply not a workable way to do things in a union of 27 member states.

I'm not opposed to holding referendums, but they should be about EU membership, with a simple yes or no. I could agree to a two-speed Europe; but it's simply not fair that a single member state who refuses gets to stop the entire process for everyone.