United Kingdom’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Anne Main Excerpts

Friday 29th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

They say that in life there are only two certainties: death and taxes. Well, I would like to add one more to the list: the certainty that this is a remainer House and that it will resist, kicking and screaming, every opportunity to take this country legally out of the European Union.

I have listened to every speech, so I am pleased to be called, and I have made a note of some of the comments made. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) said that

“the voice of remain will be heard”,

that “we must stop Brexit” and,

“we will never accept Brexit”.

Those sorts of comments—I have heard other versions of them today—have changed the context for people like me who voted against the withdrawal deal on both occasions.

It is deeply undemocratic that the method put in place by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) means that we are expected to vote in a half-an-hour slot on eight or more options that we have not debated or tested in this House, that we have not had any legal information on, that we have not had the Attorney General’s view on and that we have not run past the European Union to see whether they are acceptable to it. We are supposed to say that this is a democracy and that that method will deliver a consensus, but it will deliver a bogus consensus. On Monday, we may end up having preferential votes, as it is an amendable motion.

Despite having two years of debate about this particular withdrawal agreement and having examined the minutiae of its flaws, of which there are many, there is the potential that we will go to something far, far worse. So, for me, the context has changed and I know it has for some other hon. Members. This is a very, very difficult decision for many colleagues. There have been plenty of siren voices from the Opposition Benches. I have had hundreds of emails, as many do, on this topic alone. Most of those emails—all bar 80—are from the remain side of the argument, because they see that the withdrawal agreement, with all its flaws, is the one way that they can stop Brexit.

So today, I am changing my vote, because I am not going to be cowed into a process that means on Monday I am expected to make a choice on somebody else’s selection of what they think Brexit should mean. I am not going to choose, on behalf of my constituents and the country as a whole, based on something that has had no debate and no scrutiny, and because a remainer Parliament is hoping against hope that this deal, which is the best of the ugliest of sisters, will be struck out today in the fervent hope that they can bring something far softer or not at all. And for all those talking about a second referendum, I hope they can explain to the British people on the doorstep how, by the time they get one, it is current.