Some MPs have subsequently claimed that `Parliament can do whatever it likes'. But that isn't true, of course. Parliament consists of a number of individual MPs who have been elected by their constituents to represent them. Political parties are not recognised in our system of government and Parliament does not have the right to change the whole nature of Britain's constitution. We have (or are supposed to have) an elective democracy not an elective dictatorship. Parliament may, in law and in day to day issues, be the sovereign power in the state, but the electors are (in the words of Dicey's `Introduction for the Study of the Law of the Constitution' published in 1885) `the body in which sovereign power is vested'. Dicey goes on to point out that `in a political sense the electors are the most important part of, we may even say are actually, the sovereign power, since their will is under the present constitution sure to obtain ultimate obedience.' Bagehot, author of The English Constitution, 1867, describes the nation, through Parliament, as `the present sovereign'.
