No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government

Debate between Angela Eagle and Jim Cunningham

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I rise to support this motion of no confidence because at this critical time in our history I believe we have a Government who are incapable of governing, let alone doing so in the national interest. Never have I witnessed in all my 27 years in Parliament a Government as inadequate and incompetent as this one. I have never witnessed a Prime Minister so inept that she has squandered all personal authority and goodwill, yet like a broken record she continues to insist on her right to carry on regardless.

This is a Government becalmed in a sea of their own troubles and neglecting the country: presiding over increasing levels of poverty, homelessness and inequality, and ducking crucial reforms on social care, leaving millions relying on charity to eat. The deep splits in the Conservative party consume all of its energies, and Brexit is like a black hole that devours all light, out of which literally nothing can emerge.

This is a Government who have failed badly even on their own terms. They have failed catastrophically on Brexit. They have failed to unite a country that their obsession with the EU divided in the first place. They have failed to deliver on the Prime Minister’s personal promise to deal with “burning injustices”, instead providing us with a parade of incompetent Ministers, unparalleled in any Administration since the second world war.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a telling point. While the Government dither over Brexit, meanwhile back home we face the range of issues she has just talked about: food banks, unemployment and problems with the health service, education and so forth. One of the reasons why we want a general election is to deal with those things.

[Ms Eagle]

I agree with my hon. Friend. This Government are paralysed, dealing with their own obsessions, not with the real need and crucial policy issues in the country.

Yesterday’s defeat on the draft withdrawal agreement was a catastrophic loss of the Prime Minister’s own personal plan to engineer a hard Brexit in the UK, and it was entirely deserved. The Prime Minister has been humiliated by losing the vote on a plan she devised after little or no consultation with her own Cabinet. She finds herself in this position because of a series of colossal misjudgments that were entirely her own and for which she must now take personal responsibility.