‘I don’t consider myself part of an elite... my roots are in Yorkshire’

A YEAR ago Theresa May called a snap General Election expecting to win a huge Commons majority to back her Brexit strategy, in a move one newspaper infamously described as her chance to “crush the saboteurs”. It did not go as planned. This week the House of Lords inflicted two defeats on the Government over its flagship Brexit legislation, with 10 more predicted to follow, emboldening Conservative rebel MPs seeking to exploit the Prime Minister’s lack of a Commons majority to reshape the terms of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

It was the opening salvo in what is expected to be a major battle over whether the UK should remain part of the customs union, which Mrs May has vowed to leave, and whether MPs get a more “meaningful” vote on Brexit.

As leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democrats in the Lords, Lord Newby could be described as a saboteur-in-chief.

The 65-year-old is unelected and in a party which enjoys outsized influence in the upper chamber compared to its ballotbox performance, but he rejects the idea that he is part of an Establishment stitch-up of the people’s will.

The former whip points to his West Yorkshire roots, growing up in Rothwell and attending the local grammar school.

His mother’s family has lived in the area since “at least” the 16th century, and she is still there at the age of 101.

Lord Newby also recently moved back to the region, to Ripon with his wife Ailsa, the canon of the city’s cathedral.

“I don’t consider myself to be part of some Westminster elite,” he says.

“My roots are in a part of the country that we’ve described.

“My grandfather was a miner, so that doesn’t wash with me.”

He defends the role of the Lords in attempting to influence the terms of Brexit, which was very much a people’s revolt.

“We would like an elected House of Lords but leaving that aside, what seems to me doesn’t wash as an argument is to say we have a constitution, and when bits of it say something which we personally don’t like we say that that part of the constitution should be scrapped,” he says.

The former civil servant does not bat away the idea that proEU politicians are getting more organised, admitting “there are a lot of conversations going on about Brexit”.

And he thinks the size of the Lords defeats for the Government has given potential rebel Tory MPs the strength to back staying in the customs union and deal a significant blow to the Prime Minister’s exit strategy.

Mrs May has said she wants to leave the customs union so Britain can strike free-trade deals with the rest of the world.

But Lord Newby says there is an increasing realisation as negotiations stumble that leaving the bloc is “bad for the economy and potentially fatal for the Northern Ireland peace process”.

“If you look at the number of Tory rebels (in the Lords), 24, and a lot of Tory abstentions, if the vote had been six months ago I’m not sure there would have been so many – things move,” he says.

“When you’ve got former Tory Cabinet Ministers and other Ministers like Chris Patten and David Willetts, who’s very highly regarded, it demonstrates that it’s not just a group of Europhile Lib Dems who are doing this, this is a broad, broad coalition.

“Every former Cabinet Secretary voted that way, three heads of the Foreign Office; these are people who have given their