Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords, we in this House are understandably modest about the impact we may have on the general public, as the press usually cover our deliberations only when there is trouble down at t’mill. We know our place, compared to the elected Members in the other place who, rightly, take priority in these complicated matters.

However, we have at last reached a point of useful harmony, as it is alleged that there is now powerful justification that, allowing for the free vote principle—which is so often undermined in the Commons—there is a natural, built-in majority in both Houses for continuing membership of the European Union. This was brought out in a number of speeches yesterday. I was especially impressed by the offerings of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, who is in his place, the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is an erstwhile leaver who has changed his mind, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the hard-working noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who is not here at the moment.

Indeed, if the total tragedy of Brexit were to proceed either in the grotesque form suggested by the Prime Minister in her self-inflicted fantasies or in any other way as yet not explored, we should have to have a new anniversary date called national self-harm day as a national mourning day to remember it. Fortunately, this now looks less and less likely to be the woeful outcome of the three years of chaos and nonsense unleashed by David Cameron, who has apparently very wisely avoided coming to London very often since 24 June 2016.

I stress that I in no way minimise the rights of the Brexiteers who voted thus then. Indeed, I deeply sympathise with them for being put into this hideous quandary by the Government without access to any detailed information on, first, the way the EU functions —it is a complicated matter—and does its work for all the sovereign member states of the club and, secondly, the full implications of leaving the most successful socioeconomic grouping in world history.

It was hideously wrong of an ambitious and foolhardy Minister to term this vote as an instruction. It was a piece of advice from an electorate utterly fed up with the cruel Tory austerity effects and misled by Home Office Ministers, including the now Prime Minister, who refused for years to use existing strong powers of the Treaty of Rome, now renamed the TFEU, to limit immigration by those without a prior employment opportunity, as they did in other member states, and the new transitional limit system after the 2004 accession of 10 new countries. It is interesting how the extreme right-wing newspapers owned by tax exiles not paying UK personal tax never wanted to mention that awkward reality. I wonder why.

However, now we see that public opinion and the sociology of the modern, up-to-date electorate, has changed since that date. For example, the latest poll from YouGov—a reputable firm with a seriously large sample—published at the end of last month revealed that support for staying in is now at 55% to 45%. This lead rose to 14% if the choice was framed as one between accepting Theresa May’s dubious deal and staying in. Moreover, five times as many modern voters now think that leaving will weaken the economy as think it will strengthen it. I presume that those figures will expand even more in that direction if 16 and 17 year- old new voters are permitted to take part and, crucially, if all the UK expats in other countries, including those who have lived there for more than 15 years, were also to be involved.

There is an even more crucial point for what I call the Erasmus generation of younger electors who are already or aim at working elsewhere in the EU: the uniquely precious asset achieved in the Maastricht treaty by a courageous John Major—a much braver PM, of course—of EU citizenship. That was a precious asset accorded for the first time in the Maastricht treaty: the citizenship of your own country but also citizenship of the whole EU, which is a massive asset—unique in the world. The new modern, dynamic younger generation of British workers of all kinds, manual and intellectual, who wish to work, travel, play and learn in other countries is massive and growing.

Fortunately, most of their parents and grandparents agree that their opportunities are more crucial than those of retired people, but even the latter are increasingly enjoying their place in the sun—here too, when the weather is better—as they get to know other EU countries. I have had many chats with London black cab drivers with properties in Spain who attest to this new reality.

I also very much admire the efforts of the In Limbo project, which has briefed us all on the dire effects of being excluded from full civic rights if we come out of the European Union. I also commend the brilliant efforts of the leading English-language monthly newspaper, Connexion, to highlight those anxieties for them, as well as for other EU countries’ citizens living and working here. They are getting very worried indeed.

The present Brexit deal is an example of all the promises made being undermined by the new realities. Now we know what the deal looks like. It is a disastrous plan that has been attacked even by long-standing Brexiteer politicians as even worse than staying in. If the Commons, in what I hope will be a free vote this time, cannot exert its own powerful sovereignty in numbers sufficient to satisfy the public that this should be the final decision—as we used to do in the old days, with no referendums—then the public should have the opportunity to decide whether our present membership, with 40 years of achievements and a hugely successful single market, is better than all the phantasmagorical and dotty examples put forward so far elsewhere.