davidallengreen ,
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How the ‘will of the people’ is warping our politics

The phrase is used by ministers to evade proper scrutiny. Just look at their rhetoric on Rwanda.

By me, at Prospect

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/64874/how-the-will-of-the-people-is-still-warping-our-politics

There has been a great disturbance in the constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom. Some may say there have recently been many such disturbances—or at least many disturbing things. But there is one which may be more significant than all the others. And that is the rise of the “will of the people”. Of course, those in support of Brexit—surprised by their widely unexpected success in the 2016 referendum and knowing that the consensus at Westminster had long been in favour of EU membership—adopted the slogan as a means of forcing through the departure. Butsince that departure, the phrase has been employed in other contexts. In May 2023, Alex Chalk, the lord chancellor, and Suella Braverman, the then home secretary, earnestly told the House of Lords not to defy the “will of the British people” by opposing the government’s Illegal Migration Bill. And this year, the prime minister himself warned the House of Lords, in respect of the Rwanda deportation bill, that it was the “will of the people” that the legislation be passed. That a prime minister who had not won a general election—and indeed had not even won his own party’s membership contest—could freely use that rhetorical device in support of a policy that had not even featured in his party’s manifesto shows how far the “will of the people” has travelled. This totem of the Brexit era has outlived Brexit—and continues to warp our constitutional settlement today.
ALT
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