Not so gentle, but yes, they are just suggestions.
The European Parliament - in fact, no EU body - has never passed any law to make anything a crime in the United Kingdom.
The EU claims that they do have this power (Case C-176/03 Commission v Council) but has never used it, and if it did, let's just say that the UK would not be the only country to challenge that.
The EU does have the power to set civil regulations in certain cases, but in the UK those powers are powers specifically granted to it in British legislation.
It has been expressly held (in R (HS2 Action Alliance Limited) v Secretary of State for Transport) that rights that exist under the British Constitution cannot be ceded to the European Union, and absolutely explicitly that Parliamentary Sovereignty (a right explicitly granted under The Bill of Rights 1689) cannot be overruled.
BTW, last I knew the UK still lacked a formal, written constitution protecting citizens from their government.
That isn't really true. It doesn't exist in only one document and there are elements of the Constitution that can be said to be unwritten as there's no specific document that can be pointed to, except legal judgements, but the UK does have a written constitution. Elements of it are contained in a number of documents, most notably Magna Carta (1215), the Charter of the Forest (1217), the Bill of Rights (1689), the Act of Settlement (1700), the Act of Union (1707), the Great Reform Act (1832), the Second Reform Act (1867), the Trade Union Act (1871), The Representation of the People Act (1884), the Parliament Act (1911), the Representation of the People Act (1918), Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act (1928) [I've just focused on the really important cases here - and I may have missed a couple] and in a number of precedential court cases - which I won't even try to list. But - like I said, I have studied this
Sometimes I think the problem isn't that Britain doesn't have a written constitution - but that there's way too much writing involved :)
If you guys manage to kick the EU to the curb, I’d get right on correcting that. Feel free to crib ours. Especially the first ten amendments. :-)
We've already got a Bill of Rights (that's one of the more straightforward of all the documents listed above), I'm fairly happy with - there are some elements of the US one I'd like in an ideal world, but unfortunately, I think any attempt in the near future to come up with a new document of that type would be more concerned with transgenderism than anything else.
Maybe not in twenty years time - the UK is not going to change overnight - socialism is still going to have far more influence than I personally want for at least the near future. But I would rather that comes from the British Labour Party, than anybody else.
Thanks for this post. As a relatively new citizen of a Commonwealth country I find it very helpful background.
I came to your recent posts hoping to find some commentary on today’s happenings.