Article 50 Extension

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I do understand the difficulty, but I do not think it is appropriate for me to respond to or comment on what may or may not have been said by Heads of State about what may or may not be agreed tomorrow. The point I am making is about the expectation of this House as to the approach that the Prime Minister would take. There is an even greater expectation—a yearning, which I can feel across the House and which I could feel last week—that this House be given an opportunity to break the impasse for itself by finding a way forward. I am afraid the Prime Minister’s approach is the same old blinkered approach, which is, “All I’m going to do is seek time to put my deal, exactly the same, back before the House for another vote.”

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Based on the Prime Minister’s letter, I am not entirely clear why the EU would grant an extension in the first place, but the question for us all is the length of the extension that it would grant, and for what purpose. What is the Labour party’s policy?

[Keir Starmer]

I shall come to that later, but I will make this point. The period should of course be as short as possible, but it must be long enough to determine the purpose. In other words, the purpose has to determine the length. One of the mistakes we have made in the past two years, on which we have struggled and challenged the Prime Minister, is that if we let the clock, rather than the purpose, dictate we end up exactly where we have ended up now.