United Kingdom’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Friday 29th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

There was a time when Brexit meant Brexit. These days it seems to mean chaos. This grand plan to demonstrate that the UK has been Gulliver imprisoned in Lilliput for the last 46 years has fallen apart and is broken. To deal with that bùrach we have a Government so dysfunctional, so bereft of talent and so lacking in trust that the Prime Minister has given up trying to appoint Ministers. Their only saving grace is that they are opposed by an official loyal Opposition who seem incapable of doing anything that might actually help and who seem completely at odds with themselves.

We have a Prime Minister who thinks that no will turn to yes if only half the question is asked, served by a Cabinet including one Minister who thought it appropriate to tell a journalist:

“I’m past caring. It’s like the living dead in here.”

I suspect that might have been the Prime Minister herself, but it is an insult to the living dead.

Worse is to come, though, if the Prime Minister ever manages to muster enough support to resign, only to be replaced by a more vicious version of the Bullingdon club. Something worse than the current Government is lying in wait and could be about to be ushered into office by some useful idiots in the Labour party, who have stood in this Chamber and preached about principle and about how damaging the deal is, but who now pretend to have found some substantive change that makes it the best possible deal of all possible worlds. They stand on the wrong side of history, and on the wrong side of the interests of the people they were paid to represent.

I represent a constituency that is opposed to Brexit, and I am proud to say that I agree with my constituents. We want to keep our links with the EU, because we understand the benefits of our membership, especially the benefits of freedom of movement. Some 10% of the population of Edinburgh North and Leith are non-UK citizens of the EU, which is more than twice the UK average. We also have higher than average numbers of people from elsewhere in Europe, and from elsewhere in the world. We also have a higher number of immigrants from England than the Scottish average. Every one of them is welcome. We understand the benefits of immigration and the cultural and economic value that immigrants bring. We understand just how damaging Brexit would be, particularly a chaotic Brexit.

This deal—this pile of manure that we are being offered as an appetiser for the slurry to come—would harm my constituents. It is offered by a Prime Minister who has run out of road and has no other ideas. That is no basis on which to recommend anything to anyone, far less a future to our country. It is time to go back to the people and say, “This is what Brexit actually is, so would you like to go through with it or would you rather revoke article 50?” and let them have a choice with at least some idea of what the choice actually is.