Much has been written on whether a prior approval by the UK Parliament is required to trigger the withdrawal process from the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. I will not presume to comment on the technical legal issues raised by this debate. Instead, I wish to highlight how the irreconcilable monistic understandings of sovereignty held by Brexiteers and Remainers –understandings that go to the very core of the UK’s basic constitutional structure– explain the present disagreement over Article 50’s implementation. I will then conclude by examining how in the 1998 Quebec Secession Reference the Supreme Court of Canada’s reasoning made political compromises possible by avoiding solutions formulated in absolutist terms, and how a similar approach could provide Brexiteers and Remainers alike with an interesting route.
For Brexiteers, sovereignty of the people is the cornerstone, the ultimate rule of recognition, the Grundnorm –call it what…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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