United Kingdom’s Withdrawal from the European Union
Debate between Bob Seely and Dominic Grieve(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Grieve
I greatly respect my hon. Friend; indeed, I respect the views of all my hon. Friends and others on this matter. Compromise is a very important part of the political process. Compromise happens when people come together to accept an outcome that they are prepared to endorse and respect, but it is manifestly obvious—I only had to listen to one or two of this morning’s speeches from this side of the House—that that is not what is going to happen. There is no compromise, and that is because there is nothing to compromise on in terms of a future relationship. There is no settled will. I share my hon. Friend’s desire to get this over with, but the siren song being sung to us will just take us further on to the rocks, and in mid-May we will end up scrabbling around with the catastrophe of no-deal Brexit, without any ability to rectify it when currently we are in a position to do so.
Some of my hon. Friends showed great courage in supporting the indicative vote process and, in doing so, essentially rebelling against the Government’s position. I say gently to them that, having had the courage to do that, they are now abandoning it completely for something that cannot progress the debate on how we get out of our current impasse. It just will not happen.
For those reasons, however tempting it might be, and however much the calls of loyalty are made—and heaven knows, I feel them keenly—I am afraid that I cannot vote for something that, in my judgment, is not going to deliver the benefits that are claimed. Furthermore—and here I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham, not for the first and not for the last time—our constituents, whether they voted leave or remain, are being delivered something that is utterly, utterly different. The vote we take today will determine whether we end up in chaos or not.
Mr Seely
If we want to avoid chaos, can we not vote for the deal? My right hon. and learned Friend says that he is not willing to compromise and that other people are unwilling to compromise, and he bases his own lack of compromise on other people’s unwillingness to compromise. If he is willing to compromise, he will find that many people in the House are also willing to compromise. That compromise is the withdrawal deal.
Mr Grieve
I am always willing to consider compromise, but, as I said before, compromise has to come from a settled intention to respect an outcome. I have to say that there is no such settled intention, certainly among many Members on the Government side of the House. I listened to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). It was quite clear from what he said that his purpose will be to use the passage of the WAB to re-order entirely the future relationship in the way he wants. I do not disagree with that—it is his right—but it highlights why separating the two is plainly, in my judgment, impossible. Yet that is what we are being asked to do.
Exiting the European Union: Meaningful Vote
Debate between Bob Seely and Dominic Grieve(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
My right hon. and learned Friend makes eloquent points, as ever, but is not the fundamental issue here that we have a Brexit nation and a remain Parliament? However eloquent his points are, there is an emotional desire on the part of him and other Members not to respect the mandate of the British people, and that mandate is a critical one if we live in a democracy.
Mr Grieve
For two and a half years now, we have watched the process of trying to implement the result of the 2016 referendum, and if there is one thing on which I hope we might be able to agree, it is that it is perfectly plain that it is proving extraordinarily difficult to do. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, mindful of the risks of economic damage and damage to our national security and wellbeing, has laboured long and hard to try to get a deal. Yet the reality, which has become quite clear in the last week, is that when that deal is examined, it contains numerous flaws and places us in a new and complex legal relationship with the EU, which in many ways, on any objective analysis, appears to be rather less desirable than remaining in it.
I appreciate that there are hon. Members, including some of my hon. Friends, who believe that there is some clean and easy way through this process. I simply make the point that each of us as Members of this House has a responsibility to our constituents, but also to ourselves, to make judgments on what is for the best for our country. That is what I will continue to try to do, while respecting, or doing my best to give effect to and think through the consequence of, the referendum.
But I say to my hon. Friends that at the end of the day, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that it is unlikely that there is going to be agreement in this House on the model that we want, because of the inherent difficulties that flow from Brexit itself. In those circumstances, I can only repeat what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) about why I support a referendum. It is not because that presupposes a single outcome—after all, it might go against my own arguments—but because at least it provides a way of resolving this that I happen to think would be rather less divisive than the interminable debate that is going to beset us here, even if we leave on 29 March, for the next two and half to five years.
Mr Grieve
No, I will not give way again.
That is the true problem that we face. The alternative, I suppose, is that this Government may collapse and we may have a general election, but I have to say to my hon. Friends—indeed, even to Opposition Members—that I am not sure that in itself will solve the conundrum that we face.
As I say, what I would ask of the Government at the moment—I do not wish to labour these points—is that we are given the necessary space to debate this rationally, because one thing that has worried me in the past 12 months has been repeated attempts to close down opportunities for debate in this House by short-circuiting the process, and that has done us no good at all. Some of us have had to fight really hard to make sure that the process has been followed properly, and have been reviled at times for doing so—yet the evidence shows, I am afraid, that we were right. For that reason, I will try to continue in the same fashion. If we have the right process, we will come up with the right answers.