Could legal argument yet bring Brexit to an abrupt halt? If so, it would be a sensational resolution of the biggest political issue of our time. Writing in NLJ online barrister David Wolchover, formerly Head of Chambers at 7 Bell Yard, contends that there is no mandate for the UK to be taken out of the EU.
Wolchover sets out a careful and detailed argument, which extends argument he advanced in June in Counsel Magazine online, and which could provide the basis for the issue to be heard by the European Court of Justice.
In his article, Wolchover looks at the legal status of the EU referendum, argues that the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 could be considered superfluous, and asserts that the Act could be ‘described as Wednesbury unreasonable (after the test in Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation (1948) 1 KB 223’.
He writes: ‘For the government to have assumed that Parliament had affirmed a mere 37% of the registered electorate as an expression of the national will to leave the EU is manifestly so unreasonable an assumption that no reasonable person acting reasonably could have made it.’
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