Global Britain

Debate between Steve Baker and Marcus Fysh

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

Absolutely, and I shall come on to the question having been asked and answered.

Currently, journalists are asking me how I feel about tomorrow, the day of our leaving the European Union. It is, after all, the conclusion of what I have worked for for a good 10 to 12 years of my life—I got into politics because of that fury about the Lisbon treaty—so I should be elated. I should be rejoicing, but I am reminded of Wellington:

“Believe me, nothing except a battle lost is half so melancholy as a battle won.”

I approach tomorrow in a spirit of some considerable melancholy. I very much regret the division that this country has faced. I very much regret the cost of coming so far—the things we have had to do in British politics to get to this point. I very much regret the sorrow that my opponents will feel tomorrow as some are rejoicing on the streets.

I know that we are going to celebrate. I will celebrate—I will allow myself a smile and that glass of champagne and I will enjoy myself—but I will celebrate discreetly and in a way that is respectful of the genuine sorrow that others are feeling at the same time. That means not that I am giving in—it does not mean that I am turning away from what I believe—but that I recognise that all of us on the Government Benches who have won the argument now have a duty to be magnanimous. I urge that on everyone, inside and outside the House, even as we press forward. There are some who take an attitude of “no quarter” after the events of the past few years, and I say to them no, enough. We have to forgive and turn away from what has happened in the past, because we need to create the future that we can all enjoy and be proud of in this country. It is not a future based on past grievances; it is an open and expansive future that embraces the infinite value of every other person, even when we disagree with one another.

I do not wish to make a speech about disagreeing gracefully—perhaps on another occasion—but I do want to pick up on what the Secretary of State said about the battle of ideas raging around the world. She is absolutely right. It is a subject about which I have talked before, and if anybody is interested in my analysis, it is in the pinned video on my YouTube channel. A true conflict of ideas is going on right now—a widespread crisis of political economy—and when we listened to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) talk through his ideas, some of the difficulties and conflicts about how we go forward in the world were evident in what he said.

I am not going to be critical of what the hon. Gentleman said, but one point that I shall draw out is that so many people, including him, have made a plea for us to comply with the rules-based international order. I want us to do that. I want us to build up the World Trade Organisation—a great multilateral organisation that does not involve having a supreme court with wide-ranging powers to deliver free trade—but I say gently that if we comply with the World Trade Organisation rules, we cannot discriminate against food that is safe to eat, yet there are Members of this House who make both pleas: they plead that we ban American food that is safe to eat at the same time as making a plea for complying with WTO rules. People will have to make up their minds as to what they want to do. I want to respect international institutions—the things we have carefully built up to pursue human flourishing through liberty under the rule of law, not only nationally but internationally.

[Mr Fysh]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that we work together as a House to make sure that we do not take tariff reduction off the table, because if we are to achieve some of the ambitions that the Opposition outlined earlier, we need the ability to do deals with others, which requires us to be less protectionist in our own markets?

[Mr Baker]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, before I came to the House—before I expected to get into the House—I started a think-tank called the Cobden Centre. I consider myself to be an old English Cobdenite classical liberal. I believe that human flourishing will be best advanced by the policy on which my hon. Friend and I agree—one of liberalisation of both tariffs and non-tariff barriers. We should be promoting human flourishing through that deeply rooted sense of liberty that I know the Secretary of State fully believes in.

The battle in which we are engaged is, in a sense, the same old battle we have always faced. It is a battle between a belief in managing the lives of other people and a belief in liberty. Are we to be merely conservative, clinging on to the institutions of the past, or are we going to be what I would consider to be genuinely liberal? While respecting traditions that have worked, are we going to be genuinely liberal and progressive, recognising that human progress comes not through state planning and foreseeing every possible difficulty well in advance? That has never worked. It might sometimes make a contribution, but as a general principle it has not worked. Or are we going to recognise that everyone errs? Like entrepreneurs, are we going to recognise that things can and do go wrong? Are we going to have good-quality error correction mechanisms, which mean that in government, as in the market and as in science, when errors are made, they are rapidly corrected? Not only will progress in the world happen fast, but it will keep accelerating. We need the mechanisms to ensure that errors are not entrenched—not entrenched across the whole of Europe and the world—but corrected fast.

In concluding, I wish to turn to a speech made by Ronald Reagan in 1964 called “A Time for Choosing”. It is always a time for choosing. He talked about the long journey that mankind makes

“from the swamp to the stars”.

He said that

“this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.”

He went on:

“This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

The question has been asked—not just once, but four times. It was answered in a referendum; in a general election in which both main parties had leave manifestos; in European Parliament elections in which the Brexit party came first with, for want of a better term, a harder proposal for Brexit than the Government had adopted; and the question has just been asked and answered in a general election with a result that none of us could have foreseen. It is time for the whole country and the whole House, magnanimously on the part of those of us who were victorious, to accept that it is time to move forward gracefully, to believe in ourselves and our capacity for self-government, and to go forward and flourish.