May snubs giving MPs a vote on easing abortion law in Northern Ireland
THERESA May signalled yesterday she would not assist senior Tories trying to liberalise abortion laws in Northern Ireland with a vote at Westminster.
The Prime Minister congratulated the Republic of Ireland for voting decisively to overturn its original ban on all terminations except to save the mother’s life.
The country voted two to one to allow abortion on demand at up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, and at up to 24 weeks in exceptional circumstances.
In Dublin yesterday, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald and deputy leader Michelle O’Neill celebrated with a placard reading: “The North is Next”.
Democracy
The poll result means Northern Ireland is alone in the UK and on the island of Ireland in only allowing abortions if a woman’s life or mental health is at risk.
Mrs May wrote on social media that it was “an impressive show of democracy which delivered a clear and unambiguous result – I congratulate the Irish people”.
But she made it clear abortion reform was a decision for devolved government.
Some MPs now want Westminster to vote, taking advantage of Belfast having no government and assembly after power-sharing collapsed last year.
But a Downing Street source insisted it was an issue “for the people and politicians of Northern Ireland. It shows one of the important reasons we need a functioning executive back up and running”.
Mrs May is also under pressure because the Democratic Unionist Party, which props up her minority government, is strongly opposed to reform.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said last night: “The legislation governing abortion is a devolved matter and it is for the Northern Ireland Assembly to debate and decide.
“Some of those who wish to circumvent the assembly’s role may be doing so simply to avoid its decision.
“The DUP is a pro-life party and we will continue to articulate our position. It is an extremely sensitive issue and not one that should have people taking to the streets in celebration.” DUP MP Ian Paisley said Northern Ireland “should not be bullied into accepting abortion on demand”.
Justice minister Rory Stewart warned the Government must not use its “caretaker” role pending restoration of Northern Ireland’s own government “to make fundamental constitutional, ethical changes”.
Education minister Anne Milton suggested that in a free vote – as is traditional on ethical issues – she would back liberalisation.
Saying that a survey showed a majority favoured change, the former nurse added: “It does feel anomalous. We are offering abortions for women from Northern Ireland [in England], that doesn’t feel quite right.”
Hopeful
Women and equalities minister Penny Mordaunt said the poll had been a “historic and great day for Ireland” and a “hopeful one for Northern Ireland”, adding: “That hope must be met.”
Former women and equalities minister Justine Greening said: “It’s now time for debate and action to achieve the rights for NI women that we have across the UK.”
Former GP Sarah Wollaston, Tory MP and chairwoman of the Commons’ Health Select Committee, said she would work with other parties to secure a vote but if the Speaker did not allow one, Ms Wollaston said there should at least be a referendum in Northern Ireland to test opinion.
THE Irish people have spoken. Change is on its way. In the referendum held last week in the Republic, the electorate voted overwhelmingly to legalise abortion. It is an outcome that has been widely hailed as a triumph for democracy and freedom, heralding a new era of progress in Ireland.
“This is what liberation feels like,” proclaimed the feminist writer Susan Mackay, who added that the vote represented “a huge victory for humanity, for compassion, for empathy”.
That feeling has been just as prevalent within most of the media and progressive opinion in Britain. At times, during saturation coverage of the result by the BBC, it looked as if some presenters had to restrain themselves from dancing a jig.
Yet all this jubilation is in contrast to the response that greeted another referendum held recently in the British Isles. Two years ago, when the public here backed Brexit, the same liberal elite reacted with outrage and despair. There was no celebration from the progressives, only gloom.
Today, voters in Ireland are showered with praise for their wisdom in embracing change. Yet ever since the EU referendum, Brexit voters have been remorselessly denigrated for wanting change.
Far from being congratulated for their enlightened courage, they are demonised by the proEU lobby as gullible, knuckledragging idiots duped by antiBrussels propaganda.
Typical of this attitude was an outburst in March 2017 from the scientist Richard Dawkins, who described Brexit voters as “fickle”, “misled”, “illinformed” and “ignorant”.
AND the same intellectual superiority was exhibited by veteran Labour MP Barry Sheerman, who grandly declared that “when you look at who voted to remain, most of them were the better educated people in our country”. Sometimes the snobbery is explicit. “The chavs have won, mate,” said one middle-class raver at the Glastonbury festival when the Brexit result was announced.
Brimming with fury, Remain campaigners have consistently attacked not just Brexit voters but also the entire concept of referendums. Such votes, they wail, promote mob rule and bitter divisions, which undermine the subtleties of parliamentary rule. One Left-wing newspaper called referendums “a demagogue’s dream, allowing populists free rein to fan fears, distort realities and appeal to emotions”.
The irony is that the biggest peddlers of fear during the EU referendum campaign were the Remainers, with their dire talk of economic meltdown and British isolation.
Some pro-EU activists even draw a tortured historical connection between referendums and Nazism because Hitler occasionally used plebiscites during his subjugation of eastern Europe. Such an insinuation just illustrates the poverty of anti-Brexit thinking, for totalitarian rule is the very opposite of direct democracy. It is telling that ideologues who sneer at referendums are inclined to worship the EU, itself an unelected, unaccountable institution.
Even worse is the spectacular hypocrisy of the progressives. Having spent two years since Brexit bemoaning the iniquities of referendums, they suddenly see the virtues of such votes after the Irish decision.
In their view, populism is bad if it leads to EU withdrawal in Britain, good if it legalises abortion in Ireland. To them, democracy is acceptable only when it produces the right result. Otherwise, any unwanted verdict should be ignored or overturned. The liberal orthodoxy must prevail, whatever the public wants. Ireland has direct experience of this. Today, there is no question of the establishment trying to reverse the abortion vote but it was a different story in the previous decade, when the Irish people twice voted against the EU in referendums on the Nice Treaty in 2001 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2008.
Appalled at this popular defiance of the pro-Brussels line, the Irish government simply refused to accept the results and, in both cases, ordered the public to vote again.
Tragically, this is what is now happening in Britain. The progressive elite, while extolling the will of the Irish people on abortion, refuses to accept the will of the British people on Brexit. That is why we have seen endless court challenges, new versions of Project Fear, wrecking amendments in the House of Lords, and demands for a second referendum.
IT IS also why the Government and officialdom have been so useless about implementing Brexit. They do not really believe in the process of withdrawal, so they cling desperately to the EU, offering ever more concessions, ever bigger payments, ever longer transition periods, ever more complex customs arrangements. Again the contrast with the outcome of the Irish referendum is remarkable. Yesterday the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced that repeal of the abortion ban would be swiftly enacted, with the first legal terminations to take place by the end of the year.
Yet in Britain, two years after the EU vote, paralysis and inertia prevail. There is even talk that Theresa May, increasingly the queen of prevarication, wants to extend our membership of the EU customs union to 2023. It was revealed yesterday that the Electoral Commission has been paid £829,000 to make contingency preparations for the 2019 parliamentary elections, which occur after Brexit. The implication is that Britain might be staying in the EU far longer than the public thought.
The Brexit referendum should be respected as much as the Irish one. In their different ways, both votes were about autonomy. Their results were inspired by the belief of voters in their sovereign right to choose and take back control. An establishment coup against British democracy would be intolerable.
‘Leavers denigrated for wanting change’