Barrister claims Article 50 was never triggered

David Wolchover said the letter from the UK giving the rest of the EU notice of its intention to leave the bloc was without legal effect.

Writing for Counsel Magazine, he contended that the letter given to European Council President Donald Tusk earlier this year was “a faux trigger, a chimera, an illusion, not the real thing”

He said the withdrawal treaty was “likely to be unlawful” as the referendum result was not ratified by a government bill.

Mr Wolchover, who has practised at the criminal bar since 1971 and was formerly head of chambers at Bell Yard, said the Miller case established that the referendum result was not a decision binding the UK to leave the EU and that only an act of Parliament could effect that decision.

This was “the greatest elephant in the room of all time”, he added.

“It is difficult to believe that with so many lawyers in Parliament and with all that breathtaking array of legal glitterati deployed at vast expense in Miller no one in government or Parliament spotted its fundamental deficiency,” he wrote.

Commenting on the legal advice the government took, he said: “In short, it may be asked whether this was collective blindness and ineptitude or whether there was method in the madness.”