Comment by matthewmorgan
7 months ago
Some countries have constitutions that forbid giving up any parts of its territory, but apparently our government can hand over sovereignty without even a vote in parliament
7 months ago
Some countries have constitutions that forbid giving up any parts of its territory, but apparently our government can hand over sovereignty without even a vote in parliament
The UN General Assembly and various UN courts have ruled that the UK had no sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the first place.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55848126
The UN General Assembly is little more than an opinion poll, legally speaking.
Irrelevant.
Maybe to you, but not to the UK government.
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The UN is relevant how? Anyway, UK did the right thing, though. Now get rid of that US hegemony-supporting base.
The base stays in and the people stays out. It's little more than a symbolic gesture.
In theory the BIOT was under the personal control of the King, and in theory he could do what he wanted with it.
I'm assuming all this is contingent on a treaty vote in Parliament? I'm not familiar with how it works in the UK
In the UK the executive (ie "the government") makes and ratifies treaties, using delegated authority [1] from the monarch.
There is no general rule that parliament has to ratify, or even scrutinise, a treaty. The main exceptions are if the treaty requires domestic legislation to be passed by parliament, or if the treaty has significant constitutionap implications. Given our un-codified constitution here in the UK, I would imagine the latter constaint comes with some wriggle-room.
This [2] briefing by the House of Commons Library lays it all out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_Unite...
[2] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
Yes, of course Parliament will need to vote on this, but the Prime Minister of the UK has approved it and unlike in the US., in the UK votes are predominantly along party lines so it will pass.
> Yes, of course Parliament will need to vote on this
Not the case. The executive makes treaties. Parliament can scrutinise them but has no general ratification or veto role. See https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... .
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Can I visit the world you're in, where votes in US Congress aren't predominantly along party lines?
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And it can be approved with a bare majority?
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It’s not part of the UK. It’s an overseas territory owned by the crown.
Without going into the sentiment of this, I suppose Chaos Islands are not part of the United Kingdom but rather an overseas territory, so more like "property", to put it bluntly. I guess the government can just give away a building it owns, and this is more analogous than giving away "territory". And there is no current indigenous population there either.
But yeah, Jersey is also an overseas territory, can the government just give that away?
Jersey is a Crown Dependency, not an Overseas Territory. They share a King and the UK is responsible for their defense, but domestically Crown Dependencies are more independent of Parliament than your average British overseas territory.
Ok, fair point. Can the UK hand over Bermuda, or Cayman isles?
I vaguely remember handing over the Falkland Islands to Argentina was actually on the cards before the invasion, so perhaps surprisingly the answer is "yes".
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Do you have a source for this? I am not aware of any practically significant way in which the crown dependencies are different from the OTs. AMA 7.5 year resident of Bermuda.
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The United Kingdom has parliamentary supremacy with little to no checks or balances, so if the parliament wants to give away something, there is nothing that can really stop them.
Indeed. The only practical constraints on parliament are the Laws of Nature, which unlike man's laws cannot be broken, and the will of the People, in defiance of which a Parliament necessarily would fall since the Parliament is constituted from those people.
If Parliament tried to ban booze (as the US Federal Government once did) that's probably not going to go well, and maybe they would (like the US government) be forced to undo that - but all they did here was give away something very few of their citizens likely even knew they had. I was surprised it made headlines.
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