In the European Union, above all, we are watching the slow but terminal decline of the nation-state, as its monopoly of decision leaks away in two directions: upwards to the supranational institutions of the Union and downwards to the regional level.

There is no supreme constitutional law above Parliament; there is nothing which the Commons cannot do or undo by a majority of one. This parliamentary sovereignty can be lent out but not shared. If it were shareable, it would not be absolute and therefore the British would not consider it to be sovereignty.

Britain, or more accurately England, experienced in the 1640s the first modern European revolution. It ended with the 1689 settlement, which essentially did little more than take absolutism away from kings and confer it upon parliament. What that means today is that the House of Commons, which in turn really means the prime minister and his cabinet, exercise something close to the absolute sovereignty claimed by the Stuart kings