Heseltine to lead Lords’ Brexit revolt
MICHAEL HESELTINE has put himself at the head of a rebel Tory campaign to stop Theresa May taking Britain out of the EU with no deal – unless she gets the go ahead from MPs.
The peer says he will defy orders by Tory whips to not vote for a change to the Brexit Bill, which will give Parliament a veto over the outcome of Mrs May’s Brussels negotiations, including if she walks away without a deal.
Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, Lord Heseltine says: ‘This is not a confrontation with the Government. It is to ensure the Commons can exercise its authority over the defining issue of our time.’
The revolt comes at the same time as a separate campaign to force Mrs May to guarantee the rights of EU nationals in the UK to stay here – before talks even begin.
However, senior Ministers vowed to defeat both moves, claiming they would force Mrs May to enter Brexit talks ‘with one hand behind her back’.
They denied reports that the Prime Minister was ready to grant concessions, and called Lord Heseltine and his supporters ‘bad losers who are trying to wreck Brexit’.
Ardent pro-European Lord Heseltine, 83, will join forces with Labour, Lib Dem and fellow dissident Tory peers in a Brexit debate this week. If his move succeeds, up to 20 rebel Conservative MPs are threatening to inflict a similar defeat when the legislation returns to the Commons.
‘The fight back starts here,’ says the peer today. ‘My opponents will argue that the people have spoken, the [Brexit] mandate secured and the future cast. My experience stands against this argument.’ He said he would vote against the Conservative three-line whip with a heavy heart, having done so only three times in a parliamentary career stretching back more than 50 years.
Lord Heseltine explained why he felt justified in leading parliamentary ‘opposition’ to Mrs May despite her Brexit mandate from the EU referendum. Comparing it to his successful opposition to Left-wing laws put forward by the Labour Government in the 1960s, he said: ‘We used parliamentary votes to challenge Bill after Bill despite their presence in the Government manifesto.’
Lord Heseltine also echoed calls for a second EU referendum if the Brexit talks end in disaster and there is evidence that voters have changed their mind. ‘At the moment there is no evidence that public opinion has changed. The PM rides high in the polls. But what if this changes?’
He was backed by Lord Pannick, the lawyer who led the successful Supreme Court action to give MPs the right to vote on Article 50.
Lord Pannick told The Mail on Sunday that Mrs May’s stance was inconsistent. ‘She agrees Parliament should have the final say on the [EU] agreement at the end of Brexit negotiations,’ he said. ‘But she refuses to put this in the Brexit Bill or give the same commitment to allow Parliament to decide if the Government intends to leave the EU with no agreement.’ He was confident peers and MPs would agree this had to be put right.