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The action before the Court of Justice of the EU does engage legal as well as political issues, but the motive behind seeking the decision does seem to be political in nature. The reality is that, whatever the decision turns out to be, if (a big if at this stage) the UK Government were to seek to withdraw its Article 50 notice, the initiative for this, and the outcome would be driven by politics rather than by legal issues.

By their public utterances, the majority of our politicians have signed up to giving general effect to the outcome of the 2016 referendum (though they have made a complete mess of the process, no doubt because the majority decision gave no guidance on how the details were to be sorted out, allowing the competing views that were always there to flourish). Our politicians cannot now, in political terms, claim to work for the opposite result without a democratic mandate for this in the form of either a general election (in which the primary issue was - again - whether the UK should leave on the basis of the deal now for consideration before Parliament) or a second referendum in which the majority of the public reversed the outcome of the previous referendum (leaving on a no-deal/WTO basis seems not to be a practicable option as most leaver and remainer politicians appear to want to avoid a no-deal exit).

If our politicians were to get such a mandate (by no means a foregone conclusion, whatever the polls may currently say) then this would be UK democracy in action again and a perfectly proper basis for changing tack. And as far as the EU27 are concerned, it seems clear from the public utterances of their leading politicians, that the UK would be allowed to withdraw its article 50 notice in practice, as a political matter rather than a strictly legal one. From their point of view it would resolve an awful lot of headache-inducing issues without their being seen to compromise on any of the four freedoms on which they have made their stand, politically. However, one wonders whether they would not at the same time seek assurances (again, political rather than legal) that the UK would not put them through the article 50 wringer again, at least for a decade or two.

But this is all just speculation at present. We are currently on a political roller-coaster which we cannot get off, with the speed building up and no assurance that the supports for the track will hold round the next bend.