Shame of MPs who voted against the wishes of majority
PERHAPS the most astonishing revelation in All Out War – Tim Shipman’s masterly account of the EU referendum campaign – is the bit where he describes the origins of the Remainers’ Project Fear strategy.
As you’ll remember the main – indeed about the only – argument the Stronger In campaign could muster as to why Britain should stay in the EU was that if we left all sorts of terrible things would happen: a collapsing economy, mass unemployment, the possible outbreak of the Third World War…
The reason for this negativity, Shipman discloses, is that when Stronger In asked focus groups about good reasons for leaving Europe they could think of lots, the main ones being the cost and the uncontrolled immigration. But when the same groups were asked “What are the positives?” for staying in Europe, they responded with a deathly silence. Project Fear was born because it was all the Europhiles had.
It’s worth bearing all this in mind with regard to the bizarre decision by 89 MPs (plus two tellers) to vote against the Commons motion calling on the Government to trigger Article 50 by the end of March next year.
Not so long ago – when Project Fear loomed large in people’s imaginations – they might have had a perfectly valid excuse to spurn the mass popular will expressed in the form of those 17.4 million votes for Brexit on June 23.
BUT not any more they don’t. Project Fear has since been shown by Britain’s thriving, post-Brexitvote economy to have been a tissue of lies. So it follows that the only possible excuse those MPs could have for making their vote in the light of recent events is the kind of stubborn, blinkered ideology you used to find in the Soviet Union: hoary Reds sticking up for Communism no matter how much misery Lenin or Stalin wrought.
Worst of the bunch, surely, is Kenneth Clarke – the only Conservative MP to vote against the motion. Because he’s a Big Beast who served in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet and because he’s considered a bit of a character (his brown Hush Puppies, his fondness for jazz), Clarke has been granted a lot of leeway by his party over the