Cabinet minister Oliver Letwin, who is heading Whitehall’s Brexit unit to prepare the way for negotiations, said the legal advice was that article 50 of the Lisbon treaty can be invoked under the royal prerogative, which does not require parliamentary approval. Article 50 is the clause that triggers the start of a negotiation to leave the EU.
There was growing speculation at Westminster that a new Conservative administration might not want to trigger the article until the end of next year due to the political vacuum created in the EU by the French and German national elections next year. Ministers might not wish to use up the valuable two-year negotiating time if they did not know the political context in which they would be negotiating for a year. [...]
At a separate hearing of the Treasury select committee, leading constitutional lawyers revealed that the French government legal service has informed the French government that the UK would be entitled to rescind a notice to withdraw even though it had invoked article 50. [...]
Such flexibility would mean that even if it was triggered, the UK could reverse a decision to withdraw, if either parliament or a second referendum endorsed the step.
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