Why Brexiteers don't really want British Parliament and courts to be sovereign - or at least not today
It is spectacularly delicious that leading Brexiteers are arguing that the High Court today got it wrong today in ruling that we cannot leave the EU without the assent of Parliament - in that almost their entire campaign to get us out of the EU was that British courts and Westminster must be sovereign, and no longer subjugated to Brussels.
We'll also hear plenty from them about a corrupt stitch-up by the pro-European establishment to frustrate the revealed will of the British people in that we need to be out of Europe.
But the question for them is why on earth the Brexiteers want courts, MPs and Lords to have more independent power if those pillars of the British state are all so appallingly twisted and feeble.
You have to laugh, or maybe weep.
Anyway, although the government is appealing the decision, the High Court ruling is an enormous spanner in the Brexit works - because there probably won't be a definitive final ruling from the Supreme Court till mid January or so.
And I have to say if I were the PM I would be planning now how best to woo europhile MPs and Lords round to the idea that they may be endangering social cohesion and trust in our most important institutions if they were to attempt to reverse the decision to leave or compel a very diluted version of Brexit.
Because the chances of the appeal succeeding do not look magnificent. The High Court judgement is simple and compelling - that our constitution, carved and framed over many centuries, is founded on a simple idea that Parliament must have precedence over the executive, over the prime minister, on issues that affect domestic law.
And if you can think of any action as significant for domestic law as leaving the EU, you are not in the real world - which Nigel Farage, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson all repeated like a mantra during their Brexit battle.
They can't have it both ways - though doubtless they will try.