Politics begins and ends with sovereignty: the duty and right to make the legitimate final decision. We have seen this clearly during the pandemic. In every country, people have come to depend on their governments, whose authority rests on acknowledged sovereignty. This is as true, or even truer, in democracies: while monarchs and aristocrats could dispute sovereignty – and, where it suited them, divide up the cake amongst themselves – in a democracy there can only be one ultimate sovereign: the people.
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Professor Tombs is Professor Emeritus of French History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at the Centre for Brexit Policy. This article appears as a foreword for the new Centre for Brexit Policy report ‘Replacing the Withdrawal Agreement – How to Ensure Britain Takes Back Control on Exiting the Transition Period’
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