What is parliamentary sovereignty?

Parliamentary sovereignty is the idea that representative in parliament exercise ultimate control over British law and the actions of the British state. It is understood by the British political elite to be the key part of Britain's non-codified, non-entrenched constitution and to bound their political actions. Parliament gained meaningful sovereignty through a process of political struggle throughout the 18th and 19th centuries between the feudal descended landowning aristocratic class, represented politically to a greater or lesser extent by the Tory party, and the nouveau riche industrial and merchant class represented by the Liberal party. Radical working class movements like the chartists additionally applied political pressure for a transfer of powers to parliament and increased representativeness of the institution whilst having as their objective a more radical vision of popular sovereignty. The primacy of parliamentary sovereignty in British political life is therefore demonstrative of the liberal nature of British democracy. In real politik the extent of parliamentary sovereignty is bounded on two fronts, by the powers of royal prerogative now in the hands of the Prime minister, and by the reality of popular mass pressure which may lead parliamentarians to take decisions out of line with their personal judgement.