Reasserting the Centre: The Brexit Doctrine and the Imperative Mandate in British Politics

Abstract

Despite the outpouring of scholarship on the motivations behind the 2016 EU referendum result and the preliminary impact of Brexit on British politics, comparatively little time has been spent analysing the government(s) entrusted with implementation. This article aims to address this gap in the literature, examining government management of the Brexit process as a case study through which to illustrate the continued relevance of the British Political Tradition in British politics. It argues that through Brexit implementation, the May government initiated aprocess of centralisation of both policy-making influence and administrative resources within Whitehall. This process was shielded externally by appeals to the referendum result as an imperative mandate parliament was obliged to implement. Although the political landscape of May’s premiership was characterised by flux, these internal shifts towards centralisation in the executive are proposed to have had a more sustained impact through the reassertion of aspects of Britain’s ‘power-hoarding’ constitutional settlement.