Under UK law the referendum result is advisory and not binding on Parliament, a large majority of whose members are opposed to leaving the EU.
As the constitutional lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC points out: ‘Democracy in Britain doesn’t mean majority rule. It’s not the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny of the mob…It’s the representatives of the people, not the people themselves who vote for them.’
It is only when elected MPs vote in favour of a new bill to repeal the 1972 legislation that brought Britain into Europe that Article 50 can be invoked and divorce proceedings begin in earnest.
And that is unlikely to happen until after the Conservative party has elected a new prime minister who, in all probability, would call a general election to confirm the authority of parliament to vote on such a crucial issue.
The main opposition party, Labour, has already made moves to remove its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, on the grounds of his weak support of the party’s pro-European stance during the referendum campaign. And the Scottish Nationalists are likely to demand a new referendum on Independence should their country’s overwhelmingly pro-European vote be overruled by Brexit.
So no irretrievable move by Britain to leave the EU is likely to happen before this fall. Apart from anything else, the UK has virtually no trained negotiators to do a new deal with Europe or, indeed, other trading partners around the world, as everything has been done through the EU for the past 40 years.
www.gfmag.com/topics/blogs/uk-could-exit-brexit