EU Exit Day Amendment — House of Commons, 2019-03-27
Topic: International Affairs
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Mr Speaker We have seen today elements of the Conservative party in high dungeon, or dudgeon—[Interruption.] Maybe they should be in the high dungeon. We have seen them in high dudgeon about the fact that the Minister has brought a statutory instrument before us today to take away the cliff edge they were relying on plunging this country over in order to get the kind of clean break, catastrophe Brexit that many of them secretly want. I never thought in this House that I would sit here and see considerable numbers of Members of a Government party—the party opposite—planning on that basis to cause such damage to our economic prospects and the prospects for prosperity of all of my constituents and everybody else’s constituents; it is a period of history that I hoped I would never see The Prime Minister is entirely responsible for getting all of us into the mess we have seen develop over the last few months as she has repeatedly, after putting a definite leaving date on the face of the original withdrawal Act, put off the vote and put off the vote on her withdrawal agreement because she wanted, I believe, to face this House with an unpalatable choice between her deal, which many from all parts of the House have serious problems with, and the catastrophe of no deal. In a modern, mature Parliament I believe that that kind of process and choice should never be allowed to face us. Whether we voted leave or remain—whichever side of the argument we were on in 2016—we should not have been put in that position, and it was the date on the face of what is now the withdrawal Act that allowed the Prime Minister to have the leverage that she somehow thought would work to her advantage The Prime Minister has now been forced to resort to the leverage that we hear happened at the 1922 committee tonight, where she basically said "Back me so you can then sack me," and gave another date, 22 May, for when she would announce her departure. So now, while the country’s future is still in the air and not decided, we have the horrible, self-regarding spectacle of the next runners and riders in the Conservative party seeing who will inherit the poisoned chalice that the Tory psychodrama of Brexit has injected into the body politic in this country The Minister’s statutory instrument is an inevitable consequence of creating a false cliff edge. That cliff edge was created for blackmail purposes, but there remain many sensible, responsible people on both sides of the House, and we have expressed our wish not to allow the country to plunge over it. The Minister was correct to bring forward the statutory instrument, and to surmise that this Parliament will not allow a choice involving the catastrophe Brexit of leaving with no deal. We will not allow this or any future Prime Minister to blackmail this country with such appalling, disrespectful and dangerous tactics I will support the Minister’s statutory instrument tonight. I hope that in due course we will be able to have a much longer delay, to start the process again and to do it properly with some of the respect that we have seen developing in today’s indicative votes debate and with the responsible, cross-party debate that is beginning to develop and which should have happened in this country when the Prime Minister crossed the threshold of Downing Street two years ago. She has got the process exactly the wrong way round. Permanent damage has been done to our economy, our prospects, our prosperity and, more than anything else, our reputation in the world, because this Prime Minister has got this so disastrously wrong. Whoever her successor is, I hope that they will not take this to be a place that can be blackmailed, as she has done, and that they will not play Russian roulette with the prosperity and future of this country. Anyone who decides that that is a reasonable way to behave does not deserve the honour of being our Prime Minister.