Suicidal folly of the ‘Cabinet Sensibles’
WHAT on earth do Tory Remoaners think they are playing at, plotting with Opposition MPs and Brussels to water down Brexit?
Leave aside how the Cabinet rebels and Scottish Conservatives undermine David Davis’s negotiating hand as he embarks on next week’s crucial talks.
Don’t they realise that by courting Labour support they could sink their party – with the appalling risk of handing the keys of No 10 to Jeremy Corbyn?
Indeed, what possible form of Brexit – hard, soft or middling – could any true Conservative believe worse for the UK than putting our livelihoods at the mercy of an economic illiterate weaned on Karl Marx?
As for Remoaners’ claims that Leave voters had no wish to withdraw from the single market – how they insult the public’s intelligence! During the referendum, both camps spelt out repeatedly that this was precisely what a Leave result would entail.
David Cameron said it. Boris Johnson said it. George Osborne, Michael Gove and Nick Clegg – all said that if we wanted to regain border control and end subjection to the european Court, we would have to pull out of the single market.
As if voters still hadn’t got the message, the Cameron Government’s £9.3million leaflet, sent to every household, repeated it on page after page, in language a four-yearold could understand.
As for what form of Brexit (if any) we would get under Mr Corbyn, utter confusion reigns. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell says Labour would quit the single market. But trade spokesman Barry Gardiner says the party backs staying in – while shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer sits on the fence. This paper reminds MPs that the overwhelming majority of those elected last week went to the country promising to honour the referendum result.
If they are as good as their word, the hung parliament should change nothing – and Mr Davis should embark on his negotiations with the Commons solidly behind him. With supreme unconscious irony, Remoaners have dubbed those Tories plotting to undermine him the Cabinet Sensibles. Wouldn’t it be more fitting to call them the Suicidals?