Parliament’s Role in Brexit

UCL Minds

This week we look at parliament’s role in shaping Brexit-related legislation between 2017 and 2019. We ask: What role did parliament play in Brexit? More particularly, how much influence has it had over Brexit legislation? And has it done harm or good? Politics in the UK is in a state of turmoil. Every time we think it can’t get any crazier, it finds a way of doing just that. Many of the roots of the trouble can be found in Brexit. Whatever you think of Brexit, it’s clear that the referendum of June 2016 forced parliament to implement a massive switch in the direction of the country that most MPs thought was wrong, and split the main parties – particularly the Conservative Party – down the middle. The politics of ideology trumped the politics of competence. This week we look at a new piece of research by two researchers here at UCL, which sheds light on an important aspect of the story. It assesses just how much influence parliament had in shaping the various laws that had to be passed to make Brexit a reality and put alternative arrangements in place. The authors of the study are: Dr Tom Fleming, Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics here in the UCL Department of Political Science and a member of the UCL Constitution Unit, and Lisa James, Research Fellow at the Constitution Unit and co-author of the forthcoming OUP book, The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit. For more information and to access the transcript: https://ucl-uncovering-politics.simplecast.com/episodes/parliaments-role-in-brexit/transcript Date of episode recording: 2022-10-27T00:00:00Z Duration: 00:38:32 Language of episode: English Presenter: Prof Alan Renwick Guests: Dr Tom Fleming; Lisa James Producer: Eleanor Kingwell-Banham