I’m confused.

Throughout the referendum campaign the Leave campaigners (and full confession, that excluded me) argued that it was time to “Take Back Control from Brussels”.

It was a great slogan. As the Leave website put it: “Politicians have surrendered the UK’s power to veto laws we disagree with, so if the EU decides to introduce a law that will be bad for Britain there is nothing we can do to stop it”

So now that we have voted to leave that should mean that we have now ‘taken back control’ - the will of our Westminster Parliament is once again sovereign.

Which naturally means that before we tell Brussels we are leaving – invoking Article 50 in the jargon – Parliament will be consulted. That’s not only because the will of Parliament is sovereign but because the Euro referendum was not legally binding, it was only ‘advice’ to the Government not an instruction.

This is not true with all referendums. It was not true with the last referendum in 2011 when we voted whether or not to change the voting system; that was legally binding (for those of you with less than perfect memories the referendum was lost so the issue never arose).

But the Government has now made it clear that it has no intention of consulting Parliament either about beginning the process of leaving, which perhaps can be understood because of the referendum result, but they’ve also said they won’t be consulting Parliament about the actual Brexit package that is finally negotiated.

That can’t be right.

Why? First, because some parliaments will be consulted about the Brexit packages, not just some but all the parliaments in the 27 remaining members; they will have to vote in favour of the Brexit package for it to take effect. And not just the 27, but the European Parliament as well, that institution so despised by UKIP and some Conservatives, will in fact have a much more detailed oversight, both in terms of the negotiations and the final package.

So can it be right that every parliament in the EU gets to have a say on the Brexit package, every parliament except Westminster –was that what we voted for?

And whilst on the subject of what we voted for, I don’t think I noticed on the ballot paper an option of voting for either a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Brexit?

A hard Brexit – and that’s how the government is talking - means our walking away from the European single market with no trade deals in place with any other country, in other words our exporters will face tariffs wherever they sell their goods and services. That’s a pretty dire prospect for a trading nation such as ours.

But my scorn isn’t just reserved for the Leave camp. How strongly did the Remain camp make the point that, if it was to be a ‘hard Brexit’ we would be very much on our own, without the sort of EU trade deals in place that Switzerland and Norway managed to negotiate?

No wonder that the Japanese car maker Nissan has now told the Government that, unless they guarantee to pay the extra duties they are likely to face in Europe, they will not be building their new car plant in the UK. I wonder if the voters in Sunderland, Nissan’s UK home, thought of this when they voted Leave in such large numbers?

OK, you might call me a bit of a ‘Remoaner’ but I have to say that in all the time I have worked in, and studied, politics in this country there has never been a campaign when the winning side has been so quick to denounce its own slogans.

No, we do not send £350 million to Europe every week, no Turkey will not be joining the EU for many many years (if ever) and no there is not going to be a European army.

But it is this one about returning power from Brussels to Westminster that particular gets my goat.

And what, instead of parliamentary sovereignty, is the government proposing, as a way of making our withdrawal legal? It’s the Royal Prerogative, the ancient power of the crown to overrule Parliament.

Now I might be accused of trying to reverse the European referendum but the government now stands accused of trying to reverse the Civil War that 400 years ago established, once and for all (so we thought), that Parliament, not the crown, was sovereign.

Is Mrs May now about to undertake one of the greatest U-turns in our history?

  • Ivor Gaber is Professor of Journalism at the University of Sussex and a former Westminster political journalist