Brexit: UK-EU Relationship

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords, I warmly thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for initiating this debate and for his words. As a previous speaker said, the passion as well as the contents of his remarks make his speech worth reading again in Hansard. It set out all the awful implications: not just “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, or on all the Elm Streets in the United Kingdom, but “Nightmare in Downing Street”, “Nightmare in the whole of Whitehall”, “Nightmare around Parliament Square” and all over London, in particular, when this escapade and nonsense gradually unfold. Without being complacent, I like to think that the number of speakers in this debate alone who have argued for and endorsed our continuing membership of the EU reflects—I am optimistic about this—what British public opinion will be in about 18 months’ time when all these nightmare implications are considered.

I also thank my noble friend Lord Ricketts and congratulate him on his outstanding maiden speech. With his distinguished Foreign Office background, we thank him for all he has done for this country. When I was an MP, I became rather unpopular among some colleagues because I defended the Foreign Office in the House of Commons, which is always a tricky thing to do. One reason was that, as the Foreign Office became more successful, it was disliked more and more by Mrs Thatcher. I remember that vividly and, to my mind, it was an important test of what view one ought to take about our most excellent foreign service.

Timothy Garton Ash, a very distinguished historical journalist and historian who worked in Oxford and other places and travelled extensively, said on Friday, 25 November in the press:

“These days, I never travel without my Brexitometer. It measures two things: the time elapsing from the opening of any conversation”,

with anybody,

“to the first mention of Brexit”—

the average so far has been three minutes—

“and the proportion of all those I encounter who think Brexit is a good idea. Over the past two months, I’ve been in America”,

and about half a dozen other important countries,

“and the second metric is currently running at about 1%”—

that is, 1% in favour of Brexit. He continues:

“The other 99% think that we Brits have gone stark staring bonkers”.

He goes on to say that maybe he was just mixing with the wrong kind of people—the international elite, who naturally like the European Union—but, no, he was talking about a wide cross-section of people.

I commend my noble friend Lord Kerr of Kinlochard as a sober witness to this continuing and unfolding ghastly nightmare, and reiterate his words in the debate on 22 November. He referred to the way in which the Government are busily and clumsily alienating our friends in Europe before the negotiations even begin. My noble friend is not known for his histrionic utterances—far from it—and that is why we respect him so much. He said that,

“the sense that the Government are talking only to themselves, making policy in an echo chamber, the gratuitous insults from the Foreign Secretary, the random pronouncements of various Ministers, usually immediately followed by a slap down from No. 10, leave our friends … in Brussels close to despairing. They fear that there is no plan, and that when one emerges it may be rather unrealistic. They see a growing risk that the Article 50 negotiation will fail, and we will go over the cliff edge into legal chaos”.—[Official Report, 22/11/16; col. 1864.]

This immense damage to this country has been unleashed by former Prime Minister David Cameron. It is far more reckless than anything done in Suez by Anthony Eden and far more dangerous than other hysterical acts of previous Prime Ministers over the long history of unfolding British democracy. When we see David Cameron, we have to ask him again why he tore this country apart so recklessly in favour of keeping his party in order. However, it can be resisted. If, with or without the support of the Supreme Court, this matter eventually goes back to Parliament—mainly to the House of Commons—as it should, then MPs must really face up to resisting the right-wing firestorm that has been unleashed by this nonsensical decision. I quote from an article in the Guardian on 29 November. It says that,

“we can’t go on like this. If the courts give MPs the right to vote to stay in the EEA and the single market, they will need nerves of iron, reserves of courage and every possible verbal weapon to confront the right’s angry entitlement, its brutish selfishness, its mean-spirited nativism. It won’t be easy; some won’t have the stomach for it. But they surely have a duty to stand up for the only kind of Brexit that might save us from ruin”.