European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Pete Wishart Excerpts

3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons
Thursday 9th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

I will come on to my observations on how we could have gone forward much more successfully as one country in delivering on the mandate of the referendum in 2016, but I think—this reflects the comment made earlier by the right hon. Member for Gainsborough—that the whole problem with the way in which Conservative Members talk about the ease of moving forward, because we are starting from a point of convergence, is that the objective of this Government is to seek divergence, and that is precisely why these negotiations will be so difficult.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Could we just dispense with this one country, one nation business? The United Kingdom is a Union of nations, and all of them have a particular set of views about Brexit. In Scotland, we overwhelmingly reject their Brexit, and that has to be recognised in the way we go forward from now on. I hope the Labour party takes that on board; I am beginning to sense that it is. Does the hon. Gentleman understand it, and will we now stop all this talk about one nation, one UK? It is a Union of nations with their own particular set of views.

[Paul Blomfield]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point that we are a country of nations and regions and I hope, in relation to the comments I was making to Ministers, that in reaching out they will seek to reach out and obtain agreement and understanding on the way they move forward across the entire country of nations and regions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a real pleasure to see you back where you belong, Mr Deputy Speaker—in the Chair—and I congratulate you on your stunning success in securing that position. I think that we have a fantastic team of Deputy Speakers, and I look forward to serving under you for years to come.

I wish I could say that it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), but it is not. I think that I represent the almost extreme other side of the Brexit debate. I usually say that it is good to speak in a Third Reading debate, but unfortunately I cannot say that either. This is something that the people of Scotland will very much regret and mourn. We are not “leaving” the European Union; we are being taken out of the European Union against our national collective will, and believe me, Mr Deputy Speaker, that is something that will not stand.

As is conventional on Third Reading, I shall offer my congratulations to a series of speakers. I congratulate the Secretary of State—who has just departed—and his team on getting the Bill through the House of Commons. He is the one Secretary of State to be actually attuned with his Prime Minister, unlike a succession of others who did not quite see to eye with their Prime Ministers and the direction in which their Brexit was travelling. I also pay tribute to all the Opposition teams, and, in particular, to my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who has just assumed her new role and who, as always, has led our debate with such distinction and articulateness.

The people I most want to congratulate, however, are the real winners of today, the hard Brexiteers and the Farageists. Their success has been total, brutal and absolute. Not only have they managed to secure the hard Brexit that they have craved for years, but, with this Bill, they have kept in place the bullseye, the gold standard, of all hard Brexits—the possibility of a no-deal departure from the European Union. Their anti-European obsession will be quenched today: insatiable lifetime ambitions of wrenching this country out of the EU will be realised. Their victory is even more impressive because they started as a small, insignificant, cult-like fringe on the edge of the Conservative party. Such is their tenacity and commitment to the cause that they have now gone mainstream. Just one generation ago they were the B-A-S-T-ards of John Major folklore. Now they run the country. Their commitment to the cause has been so absolutely determined that they were prepared to bring down their own Prime Ministers to get their way—[Interruption.] And I shall give way to one of them now.

[Sir William Cash]

I thought it might be helpful if I could distinguish ourselves from what the hon. Gentleman described as the Farageists, for the simple reason that UKIP and now the Brexit Party were never going to form a Government. They could therefore never negotiate, nor could they legislate and nor could they deliver Brexit. They have now been reduced to dust by the decision that was taken by the British people, including in Labour leave marginal constituencies. It is the Conservative party that has now come back into its own and is doing the right thing for the right reason in the national interest.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

I am so grateful to the high priest of hard Brexiteers. The reason that UKIP and the Farageists—whatever incarnation they are on just now—have disappeared is that they have become the Conservative party. Their whole agenda has been accepted and subsumed into the Conservative party so that it is almost impossible to tell the modern Conservative party from the UKIP and the Farageists of the past.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

That victory is so complete that, on 43%, their utter arrogance is such that they never need to go back and check with the people that they are doing the right thing. In Scotland, on 45%, we demand a referendum, not to do what we want but to ask the people if they want independence. But that is not for the Brexiteers, oh no; on 43% they will do what they want. The arrogance is massive on that side.

[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend makes a good and concise point. I want to return to some of these issues, and I hope that he will come back in, because I think that this is worth being aired, discussed and debated in this House. It is an important key issue—[Interruption.] I can tell that the high priest wants to come back in again, and I will obviously indulge him.

[Sir William Cash]

The Maastricht rebellion took place in 1992-93, long before either UKIP or the Brexit party was even really thought of.

[Pete Wishart]

There is a fascinating journal, account and book to be written about this, and I am looking forward to the hon. Member’s memoirs after all this.

I want to pay tribute to some of the other people who have won today, in the great victory of this Brexit. I know that the Conservatives will, uncharitably, not do this, but somebody has to congratulate Nigel Farage. It is his vision that has been realised today. Without Nigel Farage, there would be no Brexit. Without the pressure that was put on the Conservative party from whatever incarnation of his party existed at the time, there would not be the hard Brexit that they are all celebrating today. Come on, Conservatives—give the man a peerage, for goodness’ sake! He, more than anybody else, deserves it. And wouldn’t it be comedy gold for a man who rails against unelected politicians to be given an unelected place in the legislature? Please do it, just for the comedy value.

We are not just passing a piece of legislation today. We are actually entering into a new age, a new epoch: the age of hard Brexitism. Everything that this House does from this point on will be informed and directed by this new atmosphere, culture and direction of the United Kingdom. I am trying to think of a poster boy for the new hard Brexit age, and the only thing that comes to my mind is the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) in combat casuals flying a Spitfire to the sound of hope and glory heading straight to the ground because his aircraft has suffered engine failure. That is the image that comes to mind in the new Brexit age, and God help us as we go forward. It is viciously right-wing and isolationist, and takes no account of the views of anywhere else around the whole world today. It is this new age of hard Brexit that we are now entering into.

I am looking around for some of the other hon. Members on the Conservative Benches. Obviously the right hon. Member for North Shropshire is here, but I am looking for the newly knighted dark lord of Brexit austerity, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). He is not in his place, and neither is the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), who so excited us with his tales of English nationalism. None of them is here, but all of them have to be congratulated. They are now the mainstream of the Conservative party. They effectively manipulated what was a moderate centrist party to become this party of Brexit extremists. They booted out all the moderates; none of them is here now. There is no debate or discussion, or any sort of contradiction of the views of hard Brexiteers any more, because they have booted all the moderates out. This is the new Conservative consensus, and I hope that the party today in the Bulldog Club is generous and full of largesse, and that they very much enjoy it.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) spoke of the gloom and doom on the other side of the Chamber, and I think that the hon. Gentleman put his finger on it in his complaint about the hardness of this particular Brexit. What was clear throughout the Committee stage was the harking back of Opposition Members to a previous Bill that did not make it through this House in December of last year. It did not make it through this House because those Members voted against the programme motion, and they now feel guilt for having delivered the very situation about which he complains, but which we rather regard as the intervention of providence.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I know he is tempting me to speak about the Labour party, but that is just cruelty. I will resist the opportunity to say a few words to Labour Members, other than: for goodness’ sake get your act together, because you have to be an Opposition. Not one of their Back Benchers is standing to be called in this debate today, which shows how humble they have become in this whole debate. However, I say to the right hon. Gentleman that it is a bit rich blaming a useless Labour party for sinking that last Brexit deal, because it was the hard Brexiteers who brought it down. They were prepared to sink their own Prime Minister and reject a deal because of their ultimate vision, objective and all-consuming obsession with the hardest of hard Brexits, which is what is being delivered today.

[Alan Brown]

It is ironic that the Conservatives are now saying, “You should have voted for our crap deal, but now we’ve made the deal even crappier, so get it up ye.” Does that not sum it right up?

[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend has a very delicate use of phrase, and I have to say that nothing could be put more elegantly than that. That is well understood from this side of the House.

The Brexit deal could have been anything. It could have involved a customs union or single market membership. It could have been Canada-plus-plus-plus or Norway-minus-minus-minus, but it is none of those. It is the hardest of hard Brexits because nothing else was good enough for the Conservatives, and that is what is being passed today.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Not only that; their victory has been so total that it has also been a victory over arithmetic. They know, or they should know, that their Brexit is going to damage GDP and economic growth by 5% to 6%, and that even if they get a trade deal with every country in the world, they can only make up 1.4% of that. America is only going to give them 0.2%, or a thirtieth of the damage they are going to do. To make up this damage, they are going to have to find 47 planets populated with people as rich as Americans today. That is the level of damage and arithmetical oversight that the hard Brexiteers have achieved in their victory. Numbers do not matter to a Tory party that was once obsessed with numbers. This is just the sweep of Brexit harking back to the 19th century and probably to opium wars and gunboat diplomacy. That is where their minds are stuck, sadly. The unfortunate thing is that the rest of us across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are going to pay a very heavy price for their lunacy.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his very brief intervention. All I can say to him is that they couldn’t care less about the economy or about the damage to the UK. They couldn’t care less about our relationship, about isolationism or about all the other things that this Brexit does. The only thing they care about is their hard Brexit. That is the only thing that has underpinned their whole approach in the course of the past few years. That is the only thing they wanted. Nothing else mattered other than securing a hard Brexit, so there will be huge celebrations down the Bulldog Club tonight and I hope the champagne tastes good. Will we be celebrating in the White Heather Club in Scotland, or here? Nobody bothered to ask me. Well, no, we will not. We most certainly will not be celebrating this Bill passing today.

The Government may have won their hard Brexit, but they have most definitely lost Scotland. Nothing could sum up the alienation of Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom more than the passing of this Bill. This Bill symbolises the difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK. I sometimes think this House forgets Scotland’s relationship with this Brexit disaster and chaos, so let me gently remind Conservative Members what happened. One MP was voted from Scotland with a mandate for the EU referendum, and one MP from Scotland voted for the Bill that allowed a referendum to take place. When Scotland was obliged to vote in an EU referendum that it had nothing to do with, we voted 62% to remain.

Now, people may have thought, given all that has happened, that Scotland’s voice would be accommodated, listened to and somehow taken account of—not a bit of it. Every representation was rejected. Everything to try to minimise the blow to a Scotland that wanted to stay in the European Union was ignored out of hand before the ink was even dry. Everything that we brought forward that said, “Listen. Maybe we have a different view about Brexit than the rest of you down here,” was totally and utterly ignored and disrespected.

That is why yesterday, when the Scottish Parliament was asked to agree to a legislative consent motion to allow the Government to progress and pursue this hard Brexit, the Scottish Parliament overwhelmingly said no, and only the rump of Scottish Conservatives in that Parliament voted for it. Will that matter to this Government? Will that be listened to? Absolutely not. It will be rejected, ignored and disrespected. I say to Conservative Members that that is what is driving the new demand for Scottish independence. We will no longer be ignored, disrespected, and rejected out of hand. That is why we are back here with 48 Members. That is why we have 80% of the vote. That is what the people of Scotland voted for.

[David Duguid]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I am going to enjoy this intervention from a representative of the Scottish Conservatives, who lost half their seats. Why did that happen?

[David Duguid]

I just want to gently correct the hon. Gentleman. I do enjoy hearing him speak, and we have been known to share a stage together, in fact, because I enjoy his entertainment that much. I will gently correct what he may have said inadvertently. He said that 80% of the vote in Scotland—

[David Duguid]

—80% of the seats—[Interruption.] Listen, I have absolutely no compunction about accepting that the SNP gained seats in Scotland during last month’s UK general election. We lost some seats, but it was ultimately a general election to form a Government in this place, not a general election in Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon is not the Prime Minister. On the percentage of the vote, I gently say that 55% of people in Scotland voted for Unionist parties, not for the SNP—[Interruption.] I have made my point.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is of course right that the SNP won only 80% of the seats, and I am glad that that is on the record. I say ever so gently to him that it is all very well him standing up and telling me to correct all that, but his party in Scotland has one message—I do not expect him to dispute this—and all the signs in the fields of Perthshire and Banff and Buchan and all the leaflets that went through every door said, “Vote Scottish Conservative to stop indyref 2.” All he needs to do is shake his head. That was the main message.

[David Duguid]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

No, he should just let me finish, then I will let him come back in. That was the main message put out by the Scottish Conservatives at the general election. The result was that they lost more than half their Members of Parliament. They said, “Send Nicola Sturgeon a message,” and the Scottish people did. The message they sent was, “We want to decide our own future.” The hon. Gentleman must be a little humbler about what happened. He must accept his defeat and understand the reason behind it because at some point—not today, next week, or next month—he will have to respect Scottish democracy. He will have to say that it is up to the Scottish people to determine their own future.

[David Duguid]

On the subject of democracy, this should be well known, but I point out to the House that each and every SNP Member has two main jobs. One is to speak for their constituents, of which the SNP has more because it won more seats. The other is to speak for their party. It is not necessarily their job, solely, to speak for Scotland. The SNP does not represent Scotland. I am just as much a Scottish MP. The hon. Gentleman asked me whether I accepted my defeat, but I won my seat. I am here with an increased majority, thank you very much.

[Pete Wishart]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on that, but he really must accept what is happening in Scotland. Something dramatic is going on. I think all of us agree that there will be another referendum at some point, because things are totally and utterly—[Interruption.] Conservative Members are saying no. Did my hon. Friends hear them?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

We heard them say no.

[Pete Wishart]

We heard them say no, but whenever they say no to Scotland and say that they will deny Scottish democracy, the only thing that that does—this is a note of caution to Conservative Members—is drive support for Scottish independence. The more they say no to us, the more we will assert our rights, and the idea of Scottish independence will continue to grow and will overrun and consume them.

My little bit of advice to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite is to say, “Just get on with it.” Just give us that independence referendum and acknowledge that we are on a different trajectory to the hard Brexit UK that they want. They can have their hard Brexit. If that is what they want, and if they want an isolationist United Kingdom, please have it. That is their choice and their democratic right. Nobody is preventing them from doing that, and I will be the first person to say, “Good luck.” Let us hope they get on and make a success of it, but do not hold my country back, do not subsume my country into what they are trying to achieve. We do not want it, and we have told them that on numerous occasions. It is over. Scotland will be an independent country, and the sooner this House recognises that, the better.

I will finish now, because I realise that I have kept the House attention’s for long enough. The battle for hard Brexit is over, and Conservative Members have won, but the battle for Scottish independence has just begun.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Craig Williams.