The House of Lords must stop blocking Boris’s Brexit bill

Boris Johnson’s internal market bill is back in the House of Lords next week, but will peers let it through? 

The bill gives the government an express power (a written one in a statute) to break an international treaty. The Lords do not like that the government might break a specific treaty. Where you stand on those are political, not legal questions — so not for a lawyer like me to answer.

But what is for law, is to firstly recognise (whether peers like it or not) that the power to break a treaty, does exist. Think of it like a physical thing; it is in our constitution and we’ve lost track of exactly where it is. We let the EU use it for us. But we know it is there. It is in the EU’s constitution, via a court case. I’ve written before of how it is in Germany’s constitution. To be frank, it is in every nation’s constitution.