Letter: Article 50 - Right to support the government

Mr Edwards of Laverton Gardens complains about the misguided loyalty of Andrew Jones and how MPs should have reflected constituency views when casting their votes on Article 50.
EU and UK flags togetherEU and UK flags together
EU and UK flags together

Mr Edwards, and many others with similar grievance, completely misunderstand or in some cases misrepresent, last year’s referendum.

The vote was a UK wide process; constituencies, counties, even the four home countries of the UK were given no preferential say in the outcome. Parliament debated the referendum bill and passed it. Therefore, the primary democratic duty of each MP was to give effect to the clear majority decision of the people of the UK as a whole.

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MPs, in this case, do not have any duty to vote based on a constituency subset of the UK vote.

If constituencies need to be taken into account, this would give Scotland a powerful reason to cry foul and block Brexit completely.

Tactical voting (to reflect particular local views) is how a lot of people wanted MPs to behave, so that in effect the process of triggering Article 50 would be stopped dead in its tracks and Brexit therefore would never happen.

The vote to trigger Article 50 in the House of Commons achieved a very large majority with no amendments to the bill.

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Everyone, whichever way they voted in the referendum, should now support the efforts of the government to get the best deal and not try to sabotage the original result.

Interesting to muse on what Mr Edwards and others would have said if the referendum result had gone the other way and the losers in that case had tried to subvert the outcome.

Andrew Michael

Goldsborough