The UK’s Sovereignty situation: Brexit, Bewilderment and Beyond…

Abstract

Debate about ‘sovereignty’ has become impossible to avoid in the UK’s current, postreferendum but pre-Brexit, constitutional environment. Perhaps this is nothing new, and UK constitutionalism has always been shaped, quite explicitly and to a significant extent, by a captivation with the concept of sovereignty. Yet at the very least, the 2016 UK referendum on European Union (EU) membership has served as the centrepiece around which public and elite exchanges about legal and political dimensions of sovereignty have visibly intensified. In this context, this paper aims to reflect briefly and critically on the UK’s present sovereignty situation, considering the use (and abuse) of the concept in debate about national membership of the EU, its relevance (and irrelevance) to the process through which we move to exit from the Union, and also the potential implications of Brexit for our often confused national understanding(s) of this idea.