With the court challenge to Theresa May’s Royal Prerogative plan starting the latest Article 50 trigger date betting:
Although nothing on the scale of EURef or WH2016 the biggest home political betting market at the moment is on when Article 50 will be invoked thus triggering the formal process of the UK exit from the EU.
Mrs. May’s plan, which she stated again yesterday, is for this to happen by the end of March 2017. Her desire is to avoid Parliament having a say in the triggering decision stating there her authority is what happened on June 23rd.
The initial obstacle to avoiding MPs and peers having a say is a court case which has started in the High Court this morning. Clearly there is concern that this could delay the process for quite a long period. You could see all sorts of amendments being put forward and the government probably does not have enough MP support to impose a guillotine motion that would set a timetable.
I cannot see Parliament blocking the move rather there would be lots of amendments and efforts to set conditions for the invocation.
Even, as I think is likely, the courts rule in favour of the Royal prerogative there could still be difficulty at Westminster.
I was all green in this betting market but I’ve switched in the past few days to back the post July 1 2017 option. I’m on this at an average of about 8/1.