No name-calling can quite describe the stupidity of Tory MPs so desperate to foil Brexit they’ll risk making Corbyn PM
WHAT should we call those Conservative MPs (maybe 20 in number) who are so pro-Brussels that they may vote against, and possibly defeat, the Government in the Commons?
This is a question that touches the very roots of our freedoms as a nation, as individuals and as a democracy.
Are these rebels ‘mutineers’ or figures of pious principle? They have been called ‘collaborators’ by one senior Tory. Is it improper to regard them as such? Or are these times so unusual that normal rules of engagement do not apply?
Brexit, though it has yet to happen, was precipitated by a mighty plebiscite in June 2016. The electorate came out in unprecedented numbers. The result was close but clear and cannot be questioned.
Rebellious
As the BBC’s David Dimbleby said in the early hours of June 24 last year: ‘We’re out!’
I don’t know about you, but when Dimbleby uttered those words, I sat on the edge of my bed and came over all weepy, I was so proud and happy. Some members of my family wept for the opposite reason.
Ahead of the vote, David Cameron had said the result would be a conclusive, once-ina-lifetime decision. It would, he said, be a clear instruction to our political class and could not be overturned. Yet many members of that class and of the wider elite now wish to ignore that instruction.
Basically, the British Establishment has gone on dirty protest. It hopes that if it refuses to acknowledge the referendum result, Brexit will somehow go away.
Senior public figures, from Tony Blair to Kenneth Clarke to a former head of MI6 to the leaders of the CBI to ex-MP Nick Clegg (who has even written a book demanding that Brexit be blocked), have placed themselves in direct antagonism to the electorate.
These are so-called leaders of our society. They pocket the perks and the pay privileges of leadership. Yet now they are setting themselves in open conflict with the people they rule. Were there ever a recipe for revolution, this may be it.
Which brings us to our rebellious MPs.
On Tuesday, as MPs began another long debate about Brexit, a succession of backbenchers stood on their hind legs and, even while saying that they ‘respect the result of the referendum’, made plain that they hated the prospect of Brexit very, very much.
Tory MP Dominic Grieve, an archetypal lawyer, called the result an act of ‘national self-mutilation’.
Mr Grieve (a member of the Legion d’Honneur, entre nous) is a reserved, eloquent man. He speaks with the arid authority of a legal textbook. He is no tub-thumper. His lurid expression ‘national self-mutilation’ therefore jarred. It was not the natural language of so punctilious a scrivener. Maybe that rare departure from legalistic writ told us something.
Anyone who watches parliamentary proceedings will know that Brexit is being vigorously opposed by the likes of Labour’s Ben Bradshaw, Hilary Benn, Chris Bryant and Sir Keir Starmer. On the Lib Dem benches, there is Sir Vince Cable and Sir Ed Davey (how they love knighthoods in the Europhile camp!).
The Scots Nationalist clan is agin Brexit, while on the Conservative benches the most prominent Remainers, apart from Mr Grieve, include Anna Soubry, Kenneth Clarke, Nicky Morgan, and one Antoinette Sandbach. Oh yes, and a chap called Bob Neill, Muttley to Mr Grieve’s Dick Dastardly.
I have known some of them for years and, despite my rule about keeping a social distance from politicians, have a soft spot for at least five of those just mentioned.
I was therefore appalled to hear Miss Soubry state in the Commons that she had allegedly received death threats after a newspaper front page yesterday printed photographs of Tory ‘Brexit mutineers’.
No one, no matter how strongly he or she feels about the EU, should replace disagreement with violence. That goes for those who threaten Miss Soubry just as much as it does for those who have tried to intimidate Nigel Farage.
Westminster would be intolerable if MPs always obeyed their party whips. Indeed, any demand that Tory MPs support Mrs May in each and every vote is to be resisted.
The 18th century’s Edmund Burke established the principle that MPs may follow their consciences rather than being merely servants of their constituents. They are representatives, not delegates.
Yet that Burkean idea does not quite apply in the case of Brexit, for the EU referendum was not a parliamentary election. It was extraparliamentary, ultra-parliamentary, in that it went beyond and above the Commons.
It was set up to be just that — with the referendum having been established by Parliament. This was a rare, direct democratic instruction to our MPs from the populace.
Indignation
Europhile Tory rebels will argue — and they have the right to do so — that they simply want stronger economic ties with the EU after Brexit. But is that their only motive?
This week’s debate suggested other forces — vanity and personal pique, and mulishness and hunger for attention — may also have been in play. I sensed some MPs were driven as much by indignation as patriotism.
After the Government made concessions the Europhiles turned round and suddenly said those measures were unimportant and further concessions were needed.
Oh, come off it, guys. Were you serious in the first place or are you merely determined to be difficult?
Miss Soubry, in some ways admirably feisty, said she deplored the lack of ‘tolerance’ in the Brexit squabbles. Yet 24 hours earlier she kept heckling pro-Leave MPs. When Tory Brexiteer Bernard Jenkin was speaking, she hissed: ‘Oh move on, for God’s sake!’ at him.
By reporting that, am I whipping up mob violence against my friend Anna? No. I’m afraid to some extent she must reap as she sows.
Mr Grieve said Brexiteers were being ‘ disingenuous’ (a posh word for ‘ lying’) and should demonstrate ‘ a bit more honesty and clarity’. But is that not also true of the Remainers? Is it not the case that some (or many) of them want Brexit to fail because that will be the only way, after so many wild warnings of pending apocalypse, that Remainers could save face?
Peril
They are terrified that their caterwauling will be found out and that they are losing their grip on the Establishment.
Last month, Mr Clegg, with Ken Clarke and Labour’s Lord Adonis, went to Brussels for talks with the European Commission. To some of us, I regret to say, that looked very rum. Here were three Remainers trotting off to our ‘enemy’ (as Chancellor Philip Hammond has called the EC).
Were Clegg and Co giving intelligence to our country’s opponents at a time of national peril? In previous centuries, such behaviour might have led to accusations of treason.
This brings us back to the question: what should we call the more militant Remainers on the Tory side?
Their actions weaken Theresa May. Some faint-hearts even think Mrs May could be toppled by their manoeuvrings. That could lead to a Jeremy Corbyn Government.
At what point do these alleged Conservatives pause to wonder if Europhilia might not be the most important thing in politics? For, to usher in the hard socialism of Mr Corbyn would be an act of madness. It would be an act of fanaticism.
You could even call it an act of ‘self-mutilation’, done less out of high-minded internationalism than petty-minded vanity. No name- calling can quite describe the stupidity of that.