Queen’s Speech

Lord Hunt of Wirral Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may first declare my interests as set out in the register and say what a privilege it is to participate in this debate on the humble Address. Humility is not necessarily a virtue that many voters associate with politicians, but it will be vital in the weeks and months ahead.

On 8 June, the Conservative Party increased its vote from 11.3 million to 13.7 million, winning more votes than Labour ever did under Tony Blair, but we did not win a majority of seats. No one won. No vision of the future of the nation triumphed. No vision of Brexit triumphed. So we now have to work together to find a new common ground. I welcome what the most reverend Primate just said about a good Brexit and a fresh start, but that is never achieved by starting from one or other extreme of the argument.

Last year, the electorate decided that we should leave the political structures of the European Union, and that must and will now happen, but it was not a vote to end ties with our closest neighbours and friends, it was not a vote to rebuild a border across the island of Ireland and it was not a vote for economic self-mutilation. The new common ground must recognise all of that.

I strongly believe that talk of “soft Brexit” and “hard Brexit” is hugely unhelpful. Each term seems to mean whatever any individual wants it to mean. “Nothing propinks like propinquity”, as Ian Fleming wrote in Diamonds are Forever, a phrase often recalled and re-coined by US diplomat George Ball. What matters most now is not Brexit per se but the new “deep and special partnership” we must rapidly forge with our European friends and allies.

I commend to your Lordships the speech made last Wednesday in another place by Kenneth Clarke, the Father of the House—although I reassure him that he is much younger than several of my colleagues in this place. He recommended that Brexit,

“will have to be carried by … an extremely sensible cross-party majority that the House could easily command if we were able to put in place some processes to achieve it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/6/17; col. 84.]

It was another great Conservative who never became leader of my party, Rab Butler, who described politics as the art of the possible. Brexit is now all about the art of the possible. It falls not just to Ministers but, above all, to Parliament—to both Houses of Parliament —to forge that vital new relationship with Europe. It is we, by ourselves and of ourselves, working with Ministers and across all parties and none, who must build a new, broad and positive consensus.

Happily, we are not alone in our quest for a new arrangement with the rest of Europe that will satisfy a broad spectrum of political and business opinion. I strongly commend the work of the Modern Europe think tank and the paper, not readily noticed, published last August by a distinguished group including Sir Paul Tucker and Jean Pisani-Ferry, a senior adviser to Emmanuel, now President, Macron. Their Proposal for a Continental Partnership is highly reminiscent of the arguments once compellingly put forward by Lord Hurd of Westwell for “variable geometry” in Europe. In business, in diplomacy and even in politics, flexibility is prized more than ever—the one sure antidote to corporate monoculture. So why do we not look now for the bespoke answer to Brexit, too? That will require an orderly withdrawal, a stable transition and a trading relationship with the European Union based on mutual, barrier-free market access.

This is no time for inchoate anger, for brash triumphalism or for putting the interests of party above those of the nation as a whole. Let us not be bound in shallows and in miseries. In a spirit of comradeship, let us all work together to build a new, positive and optimistic consensus as we look to create our new “deep and special partnership”—a special relationship, dare I say—with our most proximate friends and allies in the world, who are of course our friends and allies in the European Union.