The beleaguered May now faces another legal challenge to her stubborn insistence that she govern the Brexit process by Royal Prerogative. It appears that there is a strong legal opinion suggesting that leaving the EU will not automatically take GB out of the Europeans Economic Area, which is actually the free market extended to the likes of Norway. To exit that requires triggering, so this opinion asserts, a certain Article 127 of a different treaty setting up the EEA.
Without wishing at this point to explore the merit of this interpretation, it casts yet another spanner into the works of a project at present going nowhere. This is because a Judicial Review is threatened causing more delay, which may end up with Parliament having a vote both on Article 50 and also on Article 127. Whilst most MPs have pledged to let Article 50 through once they have reviewed the terms, there would be no such assured majority for A127. Indeed many would argue that while the majority in the country voted for Brexit from the EU, they did not vote to leave the EEA. Indeed recent opinion polls show a huge majority (90%) wanting to remain in the single market.
We now have a legal spider’s web, cabinet discord, no plan, the political weather changing in Europe and an increasingly restive population who feel they have voted for something which is not being delivered. This could turn nasty quite quickly. It is certainly the biggest UK political cock up for very many decades. Perhaps the biggest ever.