A minor collision between politics, law and constitution

In Facts, the website which nobly attempted to inject a clear dose of reality into That Campaign, has raised an interesting point about the government's potential responses to the legal challenge to Brexit.

With merciful concision and clarity, it points out that the most compelling legal argument in the government's defence is that it CAN trigger Article 50 because in doing so it doesn't take away any rights; that is the basis for the legal challenge, but it is also only true if the government acknowledges that Article 50 can be revoked. That would mean that the invocation itself would not deprive any citizen of any rights.

However, in making this acknowledgement, argues InFacts editor Hugo Dixon, Theresa May would incur an unbearable backlash from the Brexiters, who would instantaneously smell treachery, this time without a smile on its face, and threaten to overturn her apple-cart, so recently arranged with many of the rotten ones apparently near the front, and here we would find ourselves once again in 1996, a Tory government led by a hard-working but hapless leader in tatters because of the frothing madness of the Europhobes.

Dixon's argument is clear, and it allows us to hope that the government might reveal itself a little in the coming weeks and months as it responds to the appeal. Were Mrs May to permit the presentation of a defence along these lines, acknowledging the reversibility of Article 50, we may begin to hope. Of course we still have her strident rhetoric to leave us quaking in our boots that she may drag us out anyway. But as we've posited before, for Theresa May, this could all come down to hard-nosed pragmatic choices about the impact of all this on us, our families, our households. As the economic misery builds up, and we approach the first full quarter since 23 June, she may reasonably calculate that Brexit is destined, in the end, to become an unpopular choice which we are itching to reject.