Court rules Brexit must be approved by Parliament and this grad is 'absolutely elated'

A court has thrown a spanner into the British government's plan for a speedy exit from the European Union.

On Thursday, three judges ruled that only Parliament can trigger Brexit — not Prime Minister Theresa May on her own. So now — even though the pro-Brexiters won the national referendum — MPs may end up having the final say.
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Tahmid Chowdhury is a recent university graduate. He voted and campaigned to remain in the EU, but says he respects the result of the controversial referendum. He spoke with As It Happens host Carol Off about why he signed on to be part of the case brought against the government. Here is part of their conversation.

Carol Off: Mr. Chowdhury, what was the reaction in the courtroom this morning when this ruling came down?

Tahmid Chowdhury: From our side, absolute delight. I think everyone was hopeful that the court would see our arguments in the way that they did, but there's no way that you can really know with these sort of cases. We were absolutely elated by what happened.

CO: It was a unanimous and joint judgment by all three justices. What did the judges say about the Conservative government's plan and how it wants to go forward with Brexit?

TC: Essentially they just said it's not for them to decide. They said that Parliament has the authority to trigger Article 50 and to decide the manner, timing and process of leaving the EU — not the government. They said, essentially, 'Sorry Conservative Party, this isn't your call. This is for the elected representatives of the people of the UK to decide.'


CO: What was the plan for Theresa May and the Conservatives for how they would trigger or implement Brexit?

TC: Their plan, in it's entirety, isn't very clear. That's part of problem and why Parliament scrutiny is so important. The only thing that we really knew was that they wanted to trigger Article 50 by the end of March. The one thing that was coming out increasingly is that they didn't want to have any concessions over the freedom of movement, which would have meant that the UK would have been leaving the single market, so we wouldn't have had any access to the single European market.

CO: The whole point of having supremacy of Parliament in your country, as it is in ours, is to ensure that the people's voice is heard. It's not the government, the executive branch is not in charge — it's Parliament — the people that we voted for. But at the same time, a majority of people in the UK voted for Brexit. Are we seeing a clash of two systems of democracy here?

TC: No, definitely not a clash. We're not trying to circumvent the referendum or block Brexit in any way. This is a strictly legal, not political, challenge. When people voted to leave the EU they didn't vote for a particular kind of Brexit. There's lots of ways that Brexit can happen. It can be no access to the single market, it can be having access to the single market and all sorts of things in between. The Vote Leave side of the campaign and the referendum painted lots of different versions of what that could be.