Some countries have constitutions that forbid giving up any parts of its territory, but apparently our government can hand over sovereignty without even a vote in parliament
The UK has a permanent seat on the UNSC including the ultimate single-member veto and on the sliding scale of fiction to non-fiction, international law is a lot closer to the fictional end. The UK choosing to transfer sovereignty to another country is not in-line with a ruling that says they don’t have sovereignty. They’ve chosen to be done with this controversy.
In the UK the executive (ie "the government") makes and ratifies treaties, using delegated authority [1] from the monarch.
There is no general rule that parliament has to ratify, or even scrutinise, a treaty. The main exceptions are if the treaty requires domestic legislation to be passed by parliament, or if the treaty has significant constitutionap implications. Given our un-codified constitution here in the UK, I would imagine the latter constaint comes with some wriggle-room.
This [2] briefing by the House of Commons Library lays it all out.
Yes, of course Parliament will need to vote on this, but the Prime Minister of the UK has approved it and unlike in the US., in the UK votes are predominantly along party lines so it will pass.
The Parliament being sovereign, it can pass an act about anything. It could certainly pass an act forbidding the government from ceding territory to a foreign power. However, since the current government holds a majority in parliament, in practice it won't happen.
Parliament can pass basically any laws it likes, so it could certainly do that. But that would never happen unless there was a total breakdown of MP party discipline. Hard to see that happening outside of a brexit-type constitutional impasse.
My point was that there is no constitutional requirement for parliament to ratify treaties.
It has a veto role in the text you cite (I mean, its described as an infinitely renewable 21-day delay, but that's functionally a veto, especially since the government is subordinate to and can be dismissed by Parliament during the delay, and replaced by a more cooperative government; treating the UK as if it had coequal executive, legislative, and judicial branches like the US is an error; in the UK, Parliament is supreme and the executive and judicial powers are subordinate to and contingent on its support. The government’s power usually isn’t opposed by Parliament not because the government is equal or more powerful, or has true independent powers that the Parliament can't check, but the reverse—“the government” is established from the leadership of the Parliamentary majority, and they are absolutely dependent on continued support from Parliament, so they don't, outside of the most exceptional cases, do anything that doesn't have at least tacit support of the majority of Parliament in the first place, so there is nothing to have conflict overm)
My point was that there is no constitutional requirement for parliament to ratify treaties.
Yes, it can delay a treaty. It could even pass legislation preventing a treaty from having legal effect. But that would require a extraordinary breakdown in parliamentary party discipline.
I’m not so sure. A system in which a party that wins only 34% of the vote is given a near supermajority in the legislature and control of the executive seems pretty dysfunctional to me.
Yeah, the real difference is that in the US, there is a separate election for president. In the UK, as in many other countries, the party that wins parliament gets to form the government (and determine the prime minister or whatever the title of the de facto head of the executive is). In some countries this is complicated by multiparty systems where coalitions are required, but the general idea of aligning the legislative and executive branches in this way is fairly common.
Bare majority, and with our whipping system and current parliament (massive one party domination) it will go through with ease. It has to go through the House of Lords too, and the current government don’t have a real majority there but they’re extremely reticent to oppose the democratically elected house so it’ll likely sail through there too.
Without going into the sentiment of this, I suppose Chaos Islands are not part of the United Kingdom but rather an overseas territory, so more like "property", to put it bluntly. I guess the government can just give away a building it owns, and this is more analogous than giving away "territory". And there is no current indigenous population there either.
But yeah, Jersey is also an overseas territory, can the government just give that away?
Jersey is a Crown Dependency, not an Overseas Territory. They share a King and the UK is responsible for their defense, but domestically Crown Dependencies are more independent of Parliament than your average British overseas territory.
Ok, fair point. Can the UK hand over Bermuda, or Cayman isles?
I vaguely remember handing over the Falkland Islands to Argentina was actually on the cards before the invasion, so perhaps surprisingly the answer is "yes".
Yes. Parliament can. The people living there may not be particularly happy about it though, e.g. the entire population of the Falkland Islands save like the three people who voted in favor of linking up with Argentina that one time.
While I was downvoted my answer is correct. The UK parliament can and has ceded territory and all that is required is an act of parliament.
It seems like people forget that the UK ceded everything from Ireland which was a UK constituent as opposed to a UK subject as well as Canada, Australia, India and numerous other territories.
In the UK, parliament is supreme and has the final authority.
Which highlights how stupid the war was. Argentina should have invested in a better relationship with the islands. They would all be speaking Spanish by now.
Do you have a source for this? I am not aware of any practically significant way in which the crown dependencies are different from the OTs. AMA 7.5 year resident of Bermuda.
High level overview is that it doesn’t look that different, and like most things concerning UK law and the laws of Crown Dependencies, a lot of it is just custom. There’s long been a debate over how much the UK’s Parliament can unilaterally legislate over them without their consent which remains largely untested because by custom they don’t. Overseas Territories are to my understanding creatures of the UK Parliament and remnants of the Empire whereas Jersey and Guernsey are the remnants of Normandy which the British Crown managed to retain when they lost the mainland to France. I don’t remember much about Manx history though, so I’ll refrain from commenting on them specifically.
But since you put out an AMA: how’s life in Bermuda? Would you recommend it?
Bermuda is trully wonderful. If you read HN you can easily figure out my e-Mail, feel free to drop me a message if interested further. Bermuda is the place to be if founding an insurance related start-up and probably of doing anything fintech related.
The weather is delightful, the taxes acceptable, the digital infrastructure ok. It can be an expensive place to live but a single person with no dependants could live here on $4k a month. The path to permanent residence is difficult but manageable for those who bring real value to the place (think jobs or significant capital). The people are generally friendly (though as with anywhere there are exceptions) and the Premier has at least some Software experience.
It is a very interesting question, in my humble opinion, As to Bermuda's relations with the British crown. So far as I am aware there has never been a law passed by the British parliament and enforced through the privy council which was not passed by the Bermuda Parliament before commencement. Importantly (and uniquely for the OTs). Bermuda was established prior to the Act of Union and so has a relationship with the "crown of England" rather than the "crown of Great Britain" having been settled in 1612.
The United Kingdom has parliamentary supremacy with little to no checks or balances, so if the parliament wants to give away something, there is nothing that can really stop them.
Indeed. The only practical constraints on parliament are the Laws of Nature, which unlike man's laws cannot be broken, and the will of the People, in defiance of which a Parliament necessarily would fall since the Parliament is constituted from those people.
If Parliament tried to ban booze (as the US Federal Government once did) that's probably not going to go well, and maybe they would (like the US government) be forced to undo that - but all they did here was give away something very few of their citizens likely even knew they had. I was surprised it made headlines.
> They might get punished in the next election or they may not.
If what they do is sufficiently contrary to the will of the people (or at least, those with weapons and the will to use them), they'll get punished sooner than that. Laws and constitutions are a useful abstraction but ultimately an imperfect one.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55848126