Is cancelling Brexit a possibility, now that Leavers are becoming Remainers?
A petition to nullify Brexit achieved more than five-million signatures in a few days, far exceeding the 100,000-signature threshold to trigger a parliamentary debate
The UK parliament will try to take control of Brexit this week from a severely embattled prime minister. What will follow is anyone’s guess, but it is likely to include voting on the largest range of options for leaving the EU that MPs have formally considered. One of those options is cancelling Brexit altogether. The idea would almost certainly be rejected by parliament. But just debating the possibility of reversing course would itself be hugely important in shaping what follows. Brexit can be cancelled if the UK revokes its 2017 decision to trigger Article 50 of the EU treaty, which gave notice of the intention to exit. That would have to be done before exit day itself, now extended to April 12 by the EU. Until now, few legislators seriously entertained the idea. For one thing, revocation would raise deep questions of democratic legitimacy. How could Parliament decide to reverse the result of the nationwide popular referendum of 2016? Moreover, the politics of revocation make it ...
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