Procedural Battles on Sovereignty: Interpreting the Rules in the UK House of Commons

British membership in the European Union has been marked by bitter conflicts over the meaning of sovereignty. Traditionally, the key conflict was between national and supranational sovereignty. More recently, however, conflicts on sovereignty have played out domestically, setting “People” vs “Parliament”, “Whitehall” vs “Westminster” or “London” vs “Holyrood”. Against this background, this chapter aims to analytically chart how the different conflicts on sovereignty have played out during the Brexit period. How did different visions of sovereignty clash in procedural debates? Empirically, the chapter presents an in-depth, qualitative analysis of the parliamentary debates in the House of Commons preceding key votes on Brexit-related decisions. The analysis shows that the dominant conflict between popular and parliamentary sovereignty, which was particularly divisive within the governing Conservative party, shaped the debate on the interpretation of the rules, but it overlapped with other pre-existing tensions, providing a more variegated map of positions.