Early Parliamentary General Election

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

I have been very clear that I do not believe that the Leader of the Opposition or the Prime Minister are the right people to be in government and leading the country. I am crystal clear about that. In a general election, I will go to the country and make my case that there should be a Liberal Democrat Government. A Liberal Democrat Government would revoke article 50 on day one, and that is the best way to stop Brexit. We need to find a way forward. If it is not through a people’s vote—if there is not the support for that in this Parliament—we need to look at the other way to do that, and right now, that is through a general election.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (IGC)]

The hon. Lady knows that I was a founding member of People’s Vote and she knows, too, the cost that I and many others have paid for our belief, which, at the time, was certainly not popular or fashionable. She also knows—because of the meetings that she has attended—that there is no doubt that, across the House, there is a majority, at the right moment, for that confirmatory referendum. Does she agree that—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), who has not attended those meetings, has obviously not been informed. Does the hon. Lady understand that the best way forward is to allow that process to continue, because it is obvious that that moment is coming when there will finally be that majority for a people’s vote, and that she is pre-empting that? Nobody needs to be told—especially not me and others who have been so courageous and brave, and I pay tribute to them—that this is the time not for a general election, but for a people’s vote, and it is within our grasp.

[Jo Swinson]

The right hon. Lady and I have worked together well on the people’s vote campaign, and I pay tribute to her for the courageous decision that she took earlier this year to leave her party and for the work that she has done on this campaign, but I say to her that I dearly wish it were the case that we were at a majority situation for a people’s vote. If we are at that situation then MPs can sign the motion and demonstrate that that is the case.

[Anna Soubry]

I never sign early-day motions.

[Jo Swinson]

Perhaps the right hon. Lady would make an exception for this particular early-day motion.

In the absence of that support being clearly demonstrated, we have to act; we cannot just wait. My fear is either that the Government push ahead with their withdrawal Bill and it is delivered, and Brexit is delivered on the back of Labour votes, or that we end up in January, a couple of weeks away from the deadline of crashing out without a deal, in the same precarious position, but that time the EU says, “I am sorry, but we have extended and extended again and we cannot keep doing so if you do not find a path to resolve this.”