The British get a timely reminder that democracies are not governed by the mob rule of referendums

Published: January 24, 2017 at 12:41pm

Britain’s Supreme Court has ruled today that the referendum result on Britain’s exit from the European Union does not give the government a mandate, and that the matter must be decided by parliament.

This is a timely reminder that in representative democracies, there can be no government by mob rule – and a referendum is essentially not an exercise in democracy but in mob rule.

“The referendum is of great political significance, but the act of Parliament which established it did not say what should happen as a result, so any change in the law to give effect to the referendum must be made in the only way permitted by the U.K. Constitution, namely by an act of Parliament,” David Neuberger, the president of the Supreme Court, said when reading the judgement. “To proceed otherwise would be a breach of settled constitutional principles stretching back many centuries.”

It is also a reminder – to us in Malta, too, as our system is the same – that the supremacy of parliament is greater than that of the government, and that the government is only the government because it commands the greater number of seats in parliament. It cannot act without parliament.

This is also testament to the power of a single individual, in a true democracy with functional institutions, to challenge the government with recourse to the Constitution. The case was set in motion by Gina Miller, an investment adviser, who challenged the government’s decision to take Britain out of the European Union without a parliamentary vote of consent.

She won the case in the court of first instance. The government appealed and lost.

Gina Miller