Early Parliamentary General Election Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-29
Topic: International Affairs
Jessica Rose Phillips (Labour, Centre-left): I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is ridiculous I represent a leave seat, and, as we enter this general election, I may face the fate for my beliefs that the hon. Member for St Albans fears that she will face—and that is okay. She thinks it is okay, and I think it is okay that I may have done something different from what the majority of my constituents did, regardless of the fact that 10,000 extra of them voted for me post the referendum The reality is that the Government have only ever wanted obedience. They have looked on people like me and said, "Do as we say, little girl. We’re not going to let you do anything to our precious Bill." But that is not the meaning of this place. What nobody in this place can answer is how will it end if what is returned is another hung Parliament. We did not think we were going to be here before, yet here we are. I believe the right hon. Member for Maidenhead thought that she would be having a considerably nicer time when she was next to Lord Buckethead on the evening of the general election, yet here we are What has happened since then is like a Rorschach test. The hon. Member for St Albans can look at the exact same result as the one I can look at, and we can say, "In this piece of toast, I can see the Virgin Mary". We say that the voters think exactly what we think, regardless of what they actually said, because the question is fudged. We did not do so when we asked them in a general election, and we are not going to get a decisive answer on the issue of Brexit I spoke to the Prime Minister in the Lobby the other day. He was loitering around outside the private Members’ Bills ballot, which I invited him to enter as it seems he would struggle to change the law otherwise. He asked, "What will it take for you, Jess, to support this Bill?" Am I allowed to say my own name? Is that allowed? He asked, "What will it take for you, the honourable— the incredibly honourable—Member for Birmingham, Yardley?" I said, "What it will take for me is that you ask the people where I live if they are happy with the deal". It is as simple as that. He looked at me as if this was brand new information—"This is the first time I’ve heard such a revelation"—which I thought was odd, but, you know, he is an unusual man Then the Prime Minister said to me, "Don’t you think another referendum will be dangerous for this country?" To that, I said, "I’m not entirely sure why you think it would be any different from a general election". We are all sitting in here talking about this general election, but pretty much no one has actually talked about general elections, apart from a few party political broadcasts about people’s museums in their constituencies and how beautiful the islands are. The reality is that we have all talked about the referendum. This is going to be a Brexit referendum whether we like it or not, except that we will not be being clear and we will not be being honest—none of us will be—and in what we get back we will be able to see whatever we want to see I have heard people in here say that I as a Labour voter voted to deliver Brexit based on the last general election, and that is simply not true. I did not do that. As a Labour voter, I voted for many, many things that I believe in about Labour values. My vote had nothing to do with the Brexit position of my political party and I would say the same if I was not a representative of it. We are going to dishonestly use a general election. It will not be about the fact that people in my constituency cannot send their kids to school five days a week, or about whether the NHS is serving them properly, or about whether they are happy with something that the Conservative party might say. We are going to use the general election for political expediency. Can we all stop pretending that it is about anything else?