Band of Tory rebels leave a trail that leads to plot against Brexit

Dominic Grieve and his sect don’t see the difference between parliament and government

Next Saturday, tens of thousands of Remain supporters are expected to descend on London for what is billed as the biggest ever proeuropean protest march.

They will demand a “people’s vote” on the final Brexit deal – in other words a second referendum, with the ultimate aim of stopping Brexit.

There is a growing nervousness in Downing Street that a moment of genuine danger for the Brexit process is just days away. A highly-organised pro-european machine, oiled by the cash of the financier George Soros, believes it is closer than at any time in the past two years to reversing the Article 50 process triggered by Theresa May in March last year.

A single word inserted into or removed from a seemingly obscure amendment to a Government Bill could be the key that unlocks their dream of eternal EU membership.

The Daily Telegraph has learnt that aside from the very real fear that Parliament could give itself the power to take over or even halt the Brexit process, another threat lurks in Westminster: that judges in the Supreme Court could end up deciding the issue instead.

Of course, the likes of Mr Soros have no direct say in the dealings of Parliament, but they do have a proxy in the form of Dominic Grieve and his hardcore band of Tory rebels.

“I don’t think that he [Dominic Grieve] or others have fully thought through the consequences of what they are trying to do. The end result of all this is a rejection of the Government’s position, which has the effect of stopping Brexit even if that is not their stated desire,” said Jacob Rees-mogg, the leading Brexiteer.

Earlier this week the Tory rebels believed they had secured a “personal assurance” from the Prime Minister that they would get what they want, only for her to make a “sneaky” last-minute move that whipped the rug from under their feet.

Parliament will almost certainly vote again next week on whether to give MPS the power to dictate the terms of the Brexit negotiations if a deal with Europe is rejected or if a “no deal” Brexit is proposed.

“There is a very real sense that we are approaching a moment of crisis,” a government source said yesterday. “The Prime Minister managed to avoid defeat this week by telling the rebels to trust her, which led to them backing down, but she can’t pull off that trick again because they think they have been stitched up. If there is another vote on Dominic Grieve’s original amendment it will be extremely tight.”

The amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill that covered the meaningful vote was won by the Government with a majority of just 26, meaning that if enough Tories rebelled next week the Government would lose.

That, in itself, could be enough to trigger a leadership crisis in the Tory party, but, as we shall see, the legal effect of Mr Grieve’s amendment would be not only that Parliament could dictate terms to the Government, binding Mrs May’s hands in negotiations with the EU, but that the courts could too.

Either way, the savage in-fighting in the Tory ranks is playing into Brussels’ hands in increasing measure, by sending the message that Mrs May is a weak Prime Minister who can no longer genuinely wield the threat of walking away from the negotiating table. It is all a far cry from the boasts of “taking back control” that gave the Leave campaign such a strong headwind in the EU Referendum campaign.

Even the most loyal of Tory Brexiteers admit that part of the blame lies with Mrs May, who is universally acknowledged to have done a poor job of selling the benefits of Brexit and has blinked first when facing the likes of Michel Barnier and Jean-claude Juncker.

But are the Tory rebels part of a wider plan to stop Brexit? While Mr Grieve insists he does not want to stop Brexit, he likes to keep company with those who do.

On Wednesday, he attended a meeting at the European Commission’s London headquarters in Smith Square convened by avowed opponents of Brexit. Among the groups represented were Best For Britain, the anti-brexit group founded by Mr Soros, the Hungarian-american investor known as “the man who broke the Bank of England” after he bet against the pound during the 1992 Black Wednesday crisis.

The group has been courting hundreds of MPS that it believes it can convert to its cause of a second referendum. Each one is shown electoral data that “proves” they could increase support in their constituency by backing a second referendum or a “soft” Brexit.

Among the MPS targeted are Conservatives in constituencies with a high number of Labour Remainers: by appealing to those voters, the theory goes, they could scoop up thousands more votes at the next election.

Presentations are being held three times a week attended by MPS individually or in groups.

Why this matters is that if Best For Britain succeeds in “turning” enough MPS (and it has a target of recruiting 100), Mrs May could be powerless to stop amendments to forthcoming Brexit-related bills.

And there are many more facets to the well-funded campaign. As MPS geared up to vote on Tuesday, the

Financial Times carried a full-page advertisement urging MPS to defy the Tory whip. It reproduced the November front page of The Daily

Telegraph that described 15 rebels as “The Brexit Mutineers” but replaced the headline with “The Brexit Heroes?” The ad was paid for by the Us-based civil rights campaign group Avaaz, which was founded by two other groups that have together received £1.3million from Mr Soros.

Nor is Best For Britain the only anti-brexit group out there. It works in collaboration with eight other groups that all moved onto the same floor of Millbank Tower in Westminster in March, including European Movement UK, Britain For Europe, Scientists for EU, Healthier IN the EU, Infacts, Our Future Our Choice and For Our Future’s Sake.

Once mocked as a disparate group of zealots getting in each other’s way, they are now disciplined, drilled and coordinated.

Also sharing the building’s first floor is Open Britain, which includes the People’s Vote campaign and which has organised next Saturday’s march.

It is funded by Roland Rudd, the chairman and founder of the PR company Finsbury who has been dubbed the “Godfather of Remain” and is a close friend of Lord Mandelson, the former Labour Cabinet minister.

Open Britain has close contact with MPS from all parties, with Mr Grieve, Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, among its former supporters.

Their lines of attack on Brexit are remarkably consistent. They claim not to want to stop Brexit, and like to turn Leave voters’ desire to repatriate power from Brussels against them, by arguing that parliamentary sovereignty typified by a meaningful vote is exactly what Leave voters wanted.

Conveniently, they fail to differentiate between Parliament and the Government, which, as they have been reminded by whips this week, was elected on a manifesto pledge of taking Britain out of the customs union and the single market.

Another tactic is victimhood: Ms Soubry claimed earlier this week that “shameful” death threats had forced an unnamed colleague to attend a meeting with no fewer than six undercover armed police officers – a bigger security detail than most Prime Ministers can expect at the height of terrorist threats.

Quite who came up with the tactics is unclear, but also among those attending Wednesday’s anti-brexit meeting in Smith Square were Alastair Campbell, former communications chief of Tony Blair; Tom Baldwin, who did the same job for Ed Miliband; and the Tory peer Baroness Altmann.

Arron Banks, the biggest donor to the Leave campaign, believes the campaign to stop Brexit extends to the committee rooms of the Palace of Westminster. Damian Collins, another Remain-backing Tory MP, was accused of targeting him this week.

In one of the most colourful moments of the parliamentary week, Mr Banks walked out of an evidence session on “fake news” at the digital, culture, media and sport select committee after claiming its chairman, Mr Collins, was motivated by sympathy with the Fair Vote project, which “is campaigning for a second referendum”.

On Thursday Lady Altmann was sent by the rebels to table their own amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill which will once again be debated in the Lords next week. It will be considered alongside the government amendment that was rejected by the rebels on Thursday.

Few people outside Parliament could confidently explain the legislative ins-and-outs of the Prime Minister’s dust-up with the rebels that resulted in them denouncing her as “sneaky”.

In short, the rebels thought Mrs May had agreed to give Parliament the right to tell the Government what it must do in the event of a “no deal” Brexit; a deal that is rejected by MPS, or in the event that negotiations have still not resulted in a deal by February next year. It is the rebels’ definition of a “meaningful vote”. So confident were they in their victory that they hailed “the end of no deal” and Ms Soubry told Brexiteers to “suck it up”.

‘The Prime Minister managed to avoid defeat this week by telling the rebels to trust her… she can’t pull off that trick again because they think they have been stitched up’

‘You have to ask yourself, why are the rebels so upset that they can’t amend the meaningful vote… The only possible reason… is if you want to stop Brexit’

As Mr Grieve settled into his seat in a train to Caernarvon on Thursday on his way to an appearance on Question Time, he believed he had sealed a deal that gave him all he wanted. But he had left before the final act was over, and in his absence Government lawyers inserted new wording into the amendment that had the opposite effect.

The legal prose, like Brexit itself, is head-crackingly complicated, but the key phrase was “a motion in neutral terms”, meaning that while MPS could note that they had debated the Government’s decision on no deal or a rejected deal, they could not amend the motion to give the Government any instructions on what to do next.

The wording also means the Government’s decision cannot be challenged in court.

However, if the rebels get their way the “meaningful vote” would be an instruction to the Government backed up by an Act of Parliament (the EU Withdrawal Bill), meaning it would be “justiciable”, to use the technical term. In other words Remainers could ask the courts to rule on whether the Government’s position was legal, with the ultimate effect that the courts could intervene in the Brexit process. Brexiteer MPS have asked Government lawyers for assurances that any amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill would be exempt from judicial review, but they are still waiting for an answer.

A senior government source said: “You have to ask yourself, why are the rebels so upset that they can’t amend the meaningful vote… The only possible reason… is if you want to stop Brexit.”

The next big showdown will come on Wednesday, when the EU (Withdrawal) Bill comes back to the Commons for another vote.

Downing Street intends to stand firm in the hope that the whips can pick off the “softer” rebels one by one until there are too few of them left to defeat the Government, but it is a gamble when the likes of Mr Grieve, Ms Soubry, Kenneth Clarke and others are resolute in their opposition.

It means that just one or two wavering MPS could now hold the entire future of Brexit in their hands.

Number 32 Smith Square, Westminster, is a famous address. It used to be the Conservative Party headquarters. From its windows in 1979, in 1983 and in 1987, Margaret Thatcher waved to the crowds celebrating her successive general election victories. Early this century, in an act of realestate revenge, it became the London office of the European Commission.

It was there, on Wednesday, that a secret meeting took place of the Provisional wing of the Remainer movement – fanatical cells like Open Britain, George Soros’s comically named group Best for Britain, various peers who wish to curtail the power of the elected House of Commons and Tony Blair’s former simple sword of truth, Alastair Campbell – gathered to discuss tactics. (Question to Michel Barnier and EU Commissioners: is it normal for you to lend your premises to people who are trying to undermine the position of the Government with which you are negotiating?)

Who should be spotted joining these desperadoes but top ultraremainer Dominic Grieve, Queen’s Counsel, Conservative Member of Parliament, former Attorney-general and current deputy church warden? Mr Grieve is one of those learned lawyers who use phrases like “jointly and severally” and “inter alios” in real, live conversation, and thus convince the rest of us of their brilliance. He is also a man of conspicuous propriety, like the Pharisee in the Gospel who stands apart and prays: “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are”.

The virtuous Mr Grieve swears that he is not trying to stop Brexit. He told Parliament last year, “No one in this House… wishes to fetter the Government’s hands in negotiations, or indeed the Government’s right to walk away from the negotiations.” In which case, why did he attend the meeting of people who try to do little else? Perhaps he was attempting to dissuade them, or had popped in by mistake, thinking it was still dear old Tory Central Office.

Anyway, the Blessed Dominic and his small new religious order, the Grievous Dominicans, are now very annoyed with the Government. Just when they began boasting on Tuesday that Mrs May had promised them an amendment which would indeed have fettered the Government’s hands in EU negotiations and tied down its feet if it tried to walk away from them, it turned out that she hadn’t.

The Government’s amendment twice uses the phrase “in neutral terms”, words which, under Standing Orders, make the matter voted on unamendable. This angered the Right Super-honourable and Learned Member for Beaconsfield because it stops the “meaningful” Commons vote on any Brexit deal which he and his allies seek being altered at the last moment to meaningfully mean something else. The House will be able to vote to accept or reject the Brexit deal, but not to set a date for a deal or to take charge of the negotiations or to prevent a “no deal” option being available.

The Grievous Dominicans are also angry because such a parliamentary vote would not enable those trying to stop Brexit – a category which does not, I repeat on St Dominic’s behalf, include the great man himself – to start that Gina Miller business all over again. They cannot take the British Government to court, thus passing the future of our country into the hands of the pro-remain Lady Hale of Richmond, President of the Supreme Court, and her fellow judges. Only just in time, Mrs May has prevented a gigantic, lawyer-led filibuster from taking over the process.

This insistence by hardline Remainers on what is called a “meaningful vote” makes me laugh – though perhaps I should cry. Just as the phrase “affordable housing” is a constant reminder that most housing is unaffordable, so “meaningful vote” calls to mind the fact that so many votes are meaningless.

I think, for example, of countless votes in Parliament over the years, when MPS protested vainly against measures from Brussels which, under the European treaties, they had no power to refuse or even amend. I think, too, of all the referendums in other European countries – Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands – in which the voters have thrown out Brussels acts or proposals only to be forced to vote again to give the “right” result.

When we had our own referendum two years ago next week, the idea, clearly stated by those who framed the legislation, was that this would be the meaningful vote. If we voted Leave, we would Leave. We did vote Leave – the biggest vote for one thing in our history – yet some of those who voted Remain are still trying to drain our vote of meaning.

Obviously the referendum result was upsetting for Remainers. Some protested, understandably, that their feelings should not be forgotten in the ensuing process. But that, too, was dealt with in a meaningful vote: in 2017, we had a general election. Remainers had the chance to vote Liberal Democrat, but only just over two million did so. Nearly 24 million people voted either Conservative or Labour. Both parties were committed to implementing Brexit. Thus the election re-authorised Brexit, adding many Remain votes to existing Leave ones.

Parliament voted too. It voted to trigger Article 50 (494 votes in favour). It voted by 322 to 101 to reject an amendment keeping us in the single market and the customs union. It voted for the Second Reading of the Withdrawal Bill and, last week, to stop a series of amendments designed to wreck that Bill. That’s quite a lot of meaningful votes already. Why these extra, special, flagellatory ones with Grievous Dominican knobs on?

These unyielding Remainers now assert that all they care about is parliamentary sovereignty. It is a concept with which, over the years of Brussels rule, they have grown rusty. They seem to think it means that MPS should be the Government, and therefore conduct the negotiations. It doesn’t, and it never has. Any government emerges from Parliament and cannot survive a day without its confidence, but Parliament should not – cannot – run the country.

If Parliament could tell the Government exactly what to negotiate, it might pass “meaningful” votes to its heart’s content, but Britain’s power to negotiate would collapse. The Commons might as well email its decisions direct to M Barnier, who would then ignore them. Parliament already has negotiators on its behalf: they are called “the Government”.

It is impossible for the Government to implement a Brexit deal without Parliament. If Parliament does not want it, it will vote it down, causing the Government to fall. No parliamentary vote can get more meaningful than that. Everything else is just a spanner in the works. More and more non-sectarian Remainers, I notice, can see this, and are getting fed up with the fanaticism of the Grievous Dominicans.

I am not sorry, though, that the phrase “meaningful vote” now bulks so large. It is at the heart of the argument about our membership of the EU. Over centuries, Britain achieved a parliamentary system based on the idea that people’s votes, and the votes of the people they voted for, were meaningful. Then it gave half of this away to Europe. By voting Leave, we insisted that our votes must recover their meaning. If that vote is now rendered meaningless, we shall lose faith in voting itself. Then there will be Hell to pay.

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