EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions)

Debate between Peter Kyle and Chris Philp

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Motion (E) is an attempt to bring us all together and to restore the kind of politics that will allow us to overcome the greatest challenges. We need to recognise that the House is in peril—not just of a disastrous Brexit outcome, but of falling so far in the popular esteem that we may never recover public trust.

We have lost the art of politics because we have become gridlocked in the politics of position. We have taken up positions, usually in groups, and effectively gone to war against all the other groups. There has been a heavy price to pay, even beyond the battering and the bruising of opposing views. It has been paid outside the Chamber in an ever more divided and fractious country.

The country is also bemused and demands that we chart a new course. After three years of assault and counter-attack, no position has emerged victorious. Instead, the politics of this House has been even more diminished and entrenched. Nothing will change if we are not prepared to move. A solution will emerge only if we make it so.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful tone. I would like to ask for some clarification. What will be the question in the referendum that he proposes? Given that we have already voted to leave in 2016, I assume that the question in his referendum would be to leave with the Government’s deal or to leave with no deal.

[Peter Kyle]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates where I will get to in my speech. I will answer the question once I have addressed it, but I think I can predict that we will get there soon.

I believe that the solution is to work with what we have before us: to accept the world as it is, not the world as we would like it to be. After the referendum, I travelled to Norway and met negotiators and Ministers. I visited the European economic area headquarters in Brussels and I worked alongside colleagues to champion a soft Brexit, which I then voted for. So those who say that I and others like me have simply tried to scupper Brexit from the start are wrong.

I have also voted for every proposition from the Labour Front Bench and I encourage others to do the same as another way of achieving compromise and consensus. I congratulate the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Brexit Secretary on their excellent work in crafting a set of Brexit policies that puts the future of our economy and workers first and foremost. I believe that if they had done this from a position within Government, we would have been able to present a deal to Parliament that would have been accepted. That is why our motion relates to a deal, rather than specifically to the Government’s deal.

I know that many people on these Benches still long for a better proposition than the one on offer. We must be honest with each other, however. When the Prime Minister triggered the article 50 process, we all knew, whether we voted for it or against it, that it bestowed on the Government the right to negotiate a deal on behalf of the British people. That deal is now before us, and it defines Brexit.