United Kingdom’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Friday 29th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). Another day, another Brexit vote, which is not quite the Brexit vote that we need and does not quite have the numbers that it needs to win. It does not quite give constituents, companies or our four countries the certainty that they require, yet here we are again.

The British state is beset with a Tory Westminster Government behaving like Olympian gods, as if our constituents, many of whom have livelihoods that depend on our relationship with Europe, and we were mere pawns in their chess game. They insist on bringing forward meaningful vote after vote after vote, knowing that they produce absolutely nothing, but pretend that they are doing something. This is nothing more than deceit, duplicity and deception from a Government acting in desperation. Then the Prime Minister has the audacity to go on national television and blame us, Members of this House, for her failure as Head of State to govern.

We are ensnared in a morass of procedural minutiae, with twists and turns of byzantine complexity—a six-volume Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the British Empire”—played out in painfully tedious slow-motion in what used to be held in respect as the mother of Parliaments. We cannot discuss the failure of this House without turning to the Benches on this side. We were helpfully reminded this week—everyone was reminded—that Labour is “not a remain party”, and don’t we know it. If the Labour party had done its sole job and opposed any of the disastrous moves by the Government, not simply closed its eyes and wished upon its negotiation-free Brexit, we would now have a clear way forward and we would not be clinging to the whims of the European Reform Group and the intransigence of the Democratic Unionist party. Alas, as long as we stick to this archaic, dysfunctional Westminster system, we are stuck with Her Majesty’s Opposition, complicit with Her Majesty’s Government.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady mentioned the ERG. If Her Majesty’s Government had followed the whims of the ERG we would be in a much better position today.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

The ERG does what suits it best and, as we see, many of its members are allowed to change their opinion. If only the people of the nations of the United Kingdom were allowed as much.

I would say to Labour that if Wales leaves Europe because of Labour Members, Labour fiefdom in Wales is at an end. If Labour abandons the interests of Wales, Wales will abandon Labour. This House, at the behest of both the Brexiteering Unionist parties has so far failed to make any decisions about our future relationship with the European Union. The blame is at their door. We have suggested ways forward to marshal decision making, with my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) suggesting indicative votes using an alternative voting system to decide how we proceed. That was first raised weeks upon weeks ago, long before the Government lost their first meaningful vote. If the Prime Minister had pulled her fingers out of her ears and listened to anyone other than the privileged elite of the ERG and the DUP—the elite of the Brexiteers—we could have used the last two and a half months to make some progress, to decide what the House thinks is the best way forward and to simply get on with it.

It cannot be said often enough: how often is the Prime Minister going to game democracy for her own purposes? How many ERGers will switch their votes and their previous principles on the most spurious of thin reasons? Will they not open their eyes and see that representative parliamentary democracy in this place has stalled? If it is good enough for the Tories to have multiple shots, how do they have the nerve to argue that the people are somehow unworthy of a final-say referendum? Bring on a people’s vote—our salvation in public democracy.

To close, we are where we are because of this tin-eared, time-wasting and timorous British Government, who are hell bent on putting their own interests before the interests of farmers, factory workers and families across the UK. If this is the best the Commons can cobble together, we are in serious trouble. Britain is broken, and Westminster is simply not working. The people of Wales deserve better than this failed empire of a Union. The timbers of this ship of state are rotten, and we in Wales must look to Europe and to ourselves for salvation.