European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

I was and remain a very firm remainer, but nevertheless I voted to activate article 50 because I wanted to respect the result of the referendum. After that, my responsibility is to secure what I believe to be the best outcome for the United Kingdom and my constituents. However, I must say that the more I hear about not just the lying in the referendum, but the manipulation of data and the cheating—and now allegations of foreign involvement—the less I respect it.

We hear that the Prime Minister is deserving of our respect for negotiating the deal and the continual promoting of it in the face of certain defeat. Again, for me, there is nothing to be respected about knowingly and deliberately driving the country off the edge of a cliff. On the Government’s own assessments, this deal will make the UK worse off and our people less prosperous and less secure. I cannot praise the Prime Minister for what amounts to a kamikaze approach in the face of clear evidence of impending economic damage—particularly to our manufacturing sector, with the lack of certainty over the hopes of frictionless trade.

From the outset, the Prime Minister has muddled and misrepresented. When she called the snap general election in 2017, she stated that the country was united, but Parliament was divided. She was entirely wrong: the country is more divided than ever under her leadership. After the general election, she might have reached out across the House to find support for the least damaging form of Brexit, although every form of Brexit is damaging. Instead, she chose to tack to the hard right and seek the sole approval of her own Brexit fundamentalists in the ERG. Yet these extremists will never be and have never been satisfied. They can never be thrown enough red meat, as John Major himself discovered.

This left the Prime Minister high and dry, clothed solely in the meaningless soundbites and slogans that have been the hallmark of this process. Indeed, I remain unclear about the point at which her slogan “No deal is better than a bad deal” morphed into “A bad deal is better than no deal”. A bad deal is what we have now. It makes us follow rules without having a say on those rules. Again, I am tempted to say that that would always have been the case if we were going to leave the EU, but still wanted to trade into that market while meeting the standards that that market demands.

There is no solution in the agreement to the question of the Irish border, largely because there is no solution possible that respects the Good Friday agreement aside from the UK remaining in the EU. We are told that technology will provide a solution, but as usual this is an empty soundbite. There is no technology available now, and no clue about what it will look like in the future. Technology may one day find us a cure for cancer, but that is no reason for me to start smoking now. Hon. Members will need to decide which is more important to them—the continuing peace in Northern Ireland and maintaining the integrity of the united Union, or leaving the European Union—because, certainly under this deal, we cannot have both. Business sectors have publicly stated their support for the Prime Minister’s deal, although leaked CBI emails demonstrate their true feelings, but all this deal will offer is two years of stability, during which they could up sticks and move to another part of the European Union.

Therefore, we must reject the false choice of the Prime Minister’s deal or no deal and start to chart our own route away from the ideological choice of Brexit. This is a simple one: do we want to be aligned with Europe, with its basic decent standards on food safety, consumer protection and rights at work, or do we try instead to align ourselves with deregulated, privatised Trumpist America? That is a simple choice and those are the only two options on the table.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Michael Gove)]

Nonsense!

[Christian Matheson]

It is absolutely the case and I will not take any heckling from the right hon. Gentleman.

We need to address concerns about free movement and the exploitation of migrant labour by bad employers, but there should still be an option to remain within the European Union and negotiate a much better deal than David Cameron would ever have come back with.