Crucial day for Brexit . . . and democracy
THIS is the day dominic Grieve, Qc, mp, pc – proud holder of France’s Légion d’honneur – launches a last-ditch effort to scupper the Brexit Bill and throw us on the mercy of his friends at the EU commission.
only two things can be said with certainty if he wins today’s vote to give parliament the power to block a no-deal Brexit.
one is that he will rob our negotiators of their trump card – the threat to walk away from the talks, taking our cash and easy access to our lucrative markets with us. Thus, he will encourage the EU’s ever more sneering and arrogant michel Barnier to offer Britain the worst terms possible.
The other is that victory for mr Grieve and the Remoaner Lords would seriously undermine Theresa may, perhaps opening the way to a leadership contest that would surely tear the conservatives apart.
Worse, it could ‘collapse’ the Government – as the former attorney general admits – raising the nightmare possibility of handing power to Jeremy corbyn.
naturally, mr Grieve protests he is not trying to tie our negotiators’ hands or to sabotage our withdrawal (though his ally Lord Hailsham let the cat out of the bag when he admitted on monday that he thinks Brexit a ‘national calamity’).
on the contrary, he claims, he is concerned only with the constitutional rights of parliament. Will he explain, then, why his first port of call after last week’s Brexit votes was the european commission’s London headquarters – where he addressed extremist Remoaners who openly conspire to overturn the referendum result?
and why, if he is worried only about parliament’s rights (apparently forgetting that parliament voted by a thumping majority to let the people decide on our eU membership), does he now say delaying our withdrawal would be a ‘price worth paying’ to avoid a no-deal Brexit?
no, mr Grieve has been flushed out in his true colours – as an out-and-out saboteur, intent on reversing the popular vote.
indeed, it’s not only Brexiteers who have had it up to here with his antics. even Remainers in his own constituency party have joined the grassroots outcry over his disloyalty to mrs may and the country.
This paper earnestly hopes that today, any Tory would-be rebels – and, yes, Labour mps whose constituents voted Leave – will consider where their true loyalties lie.
For Britain and democracy’s sake, the commons must defeat mr Grieve’s wrecking amendment – and let our negotiators get on with implementing the people’s will.