Deirdre Costigan
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Rejoining the EU
Deirdre Costigan Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petition 749128 relating to the UK applying to rejoin the EU.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward.
I thank Robert McMaster from Reading Central, who started the petition and is in the Gallery, as well as the 111,687 people who signed it, including 199 of my constituents. One of Mr McMaster’s biggest frustrations with Brexit is that it was never defined. It was not about what our future relationship would look like; it was simply about leaving the treaties on the European Union, and our post-Brexit relationship with the EU has left Britain worse off than if we had remained a member. People can feel that, and polling shows that most of the British public now regard Brexit as a mistake.
In whose interest was Brexit? It was certainly in the interest of countries such as Russia that want to see Britain’s influence weakened and Europe fractured. With Brexit, that is what they got. With Russia doing everything it can to provoke further division and war in Europe, this petition is a good opportunity to ask ourselves not just whether we should rejoin the EU, but the much bigger questions of what relationship we want with Europe, why, and how we get there.
Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
Many of my constituents voted to leave the EU because they were bombarded with lies, from the mythical £350 million a week for the NHS that never appeared to the lie that immigration would come down when it actually trebled. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the Prime Minister’s announcement of the new national centre for information defence will help protect our constituents from foreign state influence as we consider our relationship with the EU again?
Tony Vaughan
My hon. Friend raises a fundamental point. These are very real things that have been known for a long time, but we have not moved quickly enough to address them. I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement about that threat centre, because it is the only way that we can drill down beneath the surface of what is being said online and understand who is influencing our politics.
The answers to those questions about what our future relationship should look like will determine how we secure our prosperity for the future.