Legal manoeuvres

A much discussed intervention in the Staggers  from a lawyer (John Kerr, Lord Kerr as he also is, and  'a leading supporter of Open Britain'.) who as he says 'wrote Article 50'. The gist is that Article 50 can be cancelled if the Government so wishes. I must say I have never heard anyone arguing that it cannot be cancelled, or not realising that it was a political decision, but Kerr seems to think that view is so widespread that

some aspects of the Article seem to me rather inadequately reflected, or indeed misinterpreted, in our current public debate.... The national debate about Brexit should take account of the facts that our Article 50 letter could be withdrawn without cost or difficulty, legal or political. While still in, we also have the option of stopping the clock, in order to consult the people again. But once out, there is no easy way back in.

I can't see much more in this than another input to Remainerism, using the pretext of a legal speech to urge us all to think again, perhaps in the light of T May's piece in the Telegraph where she 'plans to enshrine in law the date that Britain leaves the EU'.   

There are a few side issues though. Kerr reveals a certain political ineptitude  by those drawing up Article 50: 

One of their concerns was to demonstrate that the Union was a voluntary partnership of sovereign nation-states, based on treaties between states, not the incipient super-state of Eurosceptic nightmares. Including an Article setting out a procedure for orderly divorce was one of several ways of underlining the voluntary nature of the Union, and I was its author.... I'm certain no-one dreamed that in 2017, a member state would trigger the procedure.

So it was only gestural. They didn't mean it. They never anticipated it. No wonder they have no real strategy for dealing with it and had to cobble together some list of demands in a particular order. And does 'a voluntary partnership of sovereign nation-states, based on treaties between states' warrant all those tired analogies about families, divorces and British gentleman's clubs or drinking rounds? What does Kerr and the others understand by terms like 'voluntary' and 'based on treaties'?