Conservatives must deliver Brexit in full or face the wrath of voters

It is no surprise that a Remain Parliament failed to reach any conclusion on the way ahead for Brexit on Wednesday, even when a number of its options were flavours of Remain.

It is no surprise either that there is still no majority in the House for the wretched Withdrawal Agreement. Not a single word of it has changed since the Prime Minister first brought it back from Brussels. It was a bad deal then and it is a bad deal now. I will not vote for an agreement that sees the UK broken up, have laws imposed on it by

a foreign power, subjected to substantial fines for non-compliance, from which there is no unilateral right of exit, and pay £39 billion for the privilege. Tinkering with the Political Declaration is futile while the legally binding Withdrawal Agreement provides an intolerable starting point for future discussions. No future prime minister could start his or her tenure by tearing up a legally binding international treaty.

What is shocking is how many Conservatives – including Government ministers – voted to revoke Article 50. Having voted to trigger it and having stood on a manifesto promising to deliver Brexit, they are now openly contemptuous of the 17.4 million people who voted Leave and all those voters who put them in office.

Those MPS have engineered a stand-off between people and Parliament to which there is only one resolution. We must leave the EU as soon as possible, even without a deal, as the law requires. The statutory instrument passed this week to extend our departure date is perfectly clear. Unless the Withdrawal Agreement is approved by 11pm tonight, the UK will leave the EU at 11pm on April 12.

This is nothing to fear from the UK perspective. Businesses I have spoken to are prepared for Brexit and have taken the necessary measures expecting departure tonight. Further delays will cause uncertainty, which really will damage business.

I have sat on a number of committees to pass “no deal” legislation and Brexit minister Chris Heaton-harris has assured MPS that the Government is on track with its preparations. The hysterical scaremongering about “crashing out” has now been revealed as nothing more than a transparent campaign for Remain.

From the EU’S perspective, Michel Barnier has confirmed that it has approved all its contingency measures for “no deal”. Even the repeated fears of a “hard” border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are now unravelling. The Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has expressed confidence that arrangements can be implemented to avoid new border checks.

These are exactly the proposals from the ERG that were once smugly dismissed as “magical thinking”. But now even Barnier has confirmed that in any scenario the Belfast Agreement will continue to apply and “there will be no hard border” using our alternative arrangements.

Remainers assume that the EU is consumed by Brexit but, in reality, many of its leaders just want to see it done so they can press on with their federalist project. Think of President Emmanuel Macron’s calls for an EU army, or Guy Verhoftstadt’s frustration that “member states are reluctant to transfer new sovereignty and powers to the EU”.

In a “no deal” scenario, both sides will have to consider Article XXIV of the WTO’S General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Then, as long as the UK and EU agree to a free-trade agreement and notify the WTO of a sufficiently detailed plan and schedule as soon as possible, we could maintain our current zero-tariff arrangements while the new deal was negotiated.

Most importantly, this approach provides the certainty that all sides are craving. A further extension, necessitating participation in the European elections, would see the whole ghastly saga continue and confirm the widespread suspicion that this has been a stitch-up all along.

Fifty-six per cent of Conservative voters already believe that “the Government … has set out to thwart Brexit from the beginning”. That will only grow if our capitulation is made absolute. Conservative candidates would be wiped out in the justifiable public anger at a national humiliation.

It was encouraging that more Conservatives voted for “no deal” than against on Wednesday, but they must remain true to that to avoid catastrophic damage to their party. They must stand up for the 17.4 million people who voted Leave, resolved to deliver Brexit in full on April 12.

Owen Paterson is the Conservative MP for North Shropshire