Tory rebels ready to defeat Government over EU charter

TORY “mutineers” could inflict an eve-of-budget defeat on the Government by making it keep an EU law that has helped foreign criminals avoid deportation.

Dominic Grieve, a Tory MP and leading rebel, has tabled an amendment which states that the Charter of Fundamental Rights should “continue to apply domestically” after Brexit.

Eight Tory MPS have supported him in tabling the amendment, which has secured support from Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The bill will be debated on Tuesday, and Mr Grieve is understood to have gained sufficient backing from Tory backbenchers to defeat the Government. However the former Attorney General is prepared to withdraw his amendment if he secures sufficient assurances from ministers that the Charter will still be recognised.

Theresa May has said she is “no fan of the Charter”, and David Davis promised that its influence would end with Brexit.

Earlier this week The Daily Telegraph published a front page that caused some consternation. It pictured 15 Conservative MPS who are considering voting against the Government’s proposal to write into statute law the precise time and date for the UK to leave the European Union. The principal objection was not so much to the photographs but to the description of the MPS as “mutineers”. They are only doing their job, their supporters said, though the argument that they are all in favour of leaving the EU and only differ with the Government over how this should be done is, to our mind, disingenuous. Many of them would be delighted if the current political instability resulted in the UK remaining inside the bloc.

But since MPS are public figures there can be no objection in a free society to a newspaper indicating which are the ones most likely to vote against the Government. They may object to the epithet mutineer, rather than rebel, but only up to a point. One backbencher, Anna Soubry, a former Cabinet minister, said she wore the description as “a badge of pride”.

This is the stuff of political and cultural debate brought about by the epoch-making referendum decision to leave the EU. And that is the point. The country voted, if only by a small majority, to break Britain’s 40-year association with what we originally thought was a trading bloc but which morphed into an embryonic superstate.

This newspaper took the view that it would be in the long-term interests of the country to leave; others, including many MPS – and the Government – argued for Remain. Leave won; and since MPS had handed over the decision to the people in a referendum they are obliged to act upon it. Some like Kenneth Clarke, a longstanding and consistent opponent of referendums, argued that in his words it was just a “gigantic opinion poll” and in a parliamentary democracy MPS were not bound by it. Constitutionally Mr Clarke is right. But the House of Commons subsequently voted by a majority of almost 400 to trigger the two-year process leading to the UK’S departure. They cannot have it both ways – object both to the populist tendencies of a plebiscite and a vote in Parliament. The alternative is dictatorship.

Which brings us to the curious reaction from the Remain side to our front page this week. It was arresting and was intended to be – not in order to intimidate the MPS who should be, and are, made of sterner stuff – but to emphasise the fact that there are still forces at work seeking to stop Brexit happening.

The individuals may disagree with that observation but we are entitled to make it and we will see during the course of the next year whether there is any merit in it. But the accusations of bullying are absurd and shrill. A pompous editorial on Thursday in the Financial

Times – a newspaper that has done everything it can to undermine and belittle the referendum decision – called it “a populist outrage that is part of a broader trend which threatens to undermine representative government in the UK.”

You wonder if these people ever listen to themselves. It is the sniffy, supercilious elitism on display inside the pink pages of the FT every day that demonstrates how remote these so-called opinion formers are from the majority of people in the country. They regard those who voted to leave as stupid, ignorant and at best naive. Of course, the core FT audience is the City, as well as EU financiers and politicians, and it is entitled to take a robust line that reflects the views of its readers just as we do.

But to suggest that making a strong case for fulfilling the referendum mandate is “undermining representative government” is so over the top as to be risible. Just imagine the reaction there would have been from the FT and other remain cheerleaders if the vote had been 52/48 in their favour and Leavers were agitating for another referendum. One thing that is guaranteed to undermine democracy is for Parliament to shrink from fulfilling the wishes of the referendum and somehow thwart its own decision to trigger Article 50.

The FT is widely read in Brussels, where no doubt EU negotiators take heart from its pusillanimous musings and are encouraged to believe Britain may yet stay in the EU or that a disproportionate penalty can be exacted for our leaving.

We appreciate that some of our own readers might have felt uncomfortable with the photographs of MPS being used on the front page. But these are no shrinking violets and they have chosen to live in the public gaze. They can live with such notoriety: it is, after all, part of the cut-and-thrust of the most contentious political debate in this country for half a century. It is just a shame they have such bombastic champions in the media.

Many of the MPS would be delighted if the current political instability resulted in the UK remaining inside the EU