EU Withdrawal Agreement

Neil Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) not only on securing this timely and important debate but on his speech and on the way he conducted himself in the face of quite disgusting behaviour, frankly, from Conservative Members.

I thank Mr Speaker for granting the debate. It is fair to say that his leadership in the past few weeks has been in stark contrast to that of the leaders of the Conservative party and the Labour party.

The Prime Minister described people discussing the possibility of a second Brexit referendum as somehow betraying the first vote or as being a direct challenge to democracy. I might be wrong, but I cannot recall another Prime Minister suggesting that giving the people their say on a matter is anti-democratic.

What we are debating today is the real failure to honour that first referendum. This Prime Minister has had the job of delivering on that result, and she has chosen her own path, which looks certain to lead to defeat. It is therefore this Prime Minister who has failed to honour the referendum result, and she has failed because she has been too scared to take on her European Research Group extreme Brexiteers in case they submit letters of no confidence to challenge her leadership.

So unwilling has the Prime Minister been to have her Peel moment with her party that she boxed herself into a corner from which it has been impossible to extricate herself. She could have shown leadership and chosen other paths. As the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) rightly acknowledged, the Scottish Government offered a compromise position that many in her own party think would have been passed by this House last year if it had been supported, and that was to remain in the single market and the customs union—the least-worst option on the table regarding Brexit.

Sadly, Labour’s leadership has been equally lacking. They have done nothing to be the real opposition to this Tory Government. They have taken the tactical decision to take no position, to offer no leadership, to do nothing and to wait to see what happens, which has clearly been in evidence over the last week. They are just as happy as this Government to kick the can down the road.

Labour does not really know what it wants to do with Brexit, and at every turn the Leader of the Opposition has, like the Prime Minister, looked at narrow party political advantage rather than work in the interest of all countries in these isles. It gives me no pleasure to say that, because there are some, such as the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and others in the Labour party, who are doing what they can to shift the Labour leadership. But even in the narrow scope Labour is currently operating within, it has still failed in its objective by missing the opportunity to call a vote of no confidence last week when we asked it to work with us to do so.

I cannot think of a more inept and incompetent combination of Government and official Opposition, and at this time of crisis that is unforgivable. That is what is causing the

“irreparable damage to the integrity of our politics”—[Official Report, 17 December 2018; Vol. 651, c. 529.]

that the Prime Minister speaks of: an unwillingness of both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to see beyond the end of their own noses. Rather than work with us last week to call a proper no confidence vote before the Tories held their own, Labour ignored us. The Prime Minister won that Tory vote and Labour lost the initiative. Even when Labour ended up belatedly tabling the no confidence motion last night, in a moment of absolute chaos in the leadership office and the Whips office, it still could not get it right, and it was left to the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Lib Dems and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) to make it meaningful and not just a poorly executed political stunt. Perhaps those sensible Labour MPs who remain might now look to our amendment, support it and put pressure on their leadership to finally step up to the mark. At this time of political crisis, the public are looking for leadership. The First Minister of Scotland has shown that leadership for the entirety of this Brexit process. Sadly both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition continue to compete to see who can be the most inept. Is it any wonder that the people of Scotland, in growing numbers, want their chance to choose a different path, one of which leads to Scottish independence?