James Delingpole
years. You do wonder, though, what kind of Tory you’d need to be so flagrantly to disregard the democratic will of a sovereign state and insist on shackling it to the corpse of a moribund socialistic superstate controlled by unelected commissars.
Isn’t one of the most fundamental principles of Conservatism that you encourage people to take responsibility for their own destiny rather than nannying them at every turn, as the EU would prefer, with the hand of Big Government? And if you’re the One Nation variety – as Clarke probably thinks he is – how exactly is it conducive to a stable, happy realm where you blithely ignore the wishes of the majority in working towns such as Sunderland in favour of a pampered elite minority in rich enclaves like London?
Still, Kenneth Clarke does at least have the excuse of representing a constituency – Rushcliffe – which voted (by 57 per cent) for Remain. This is more than can be said for at least six of the MPs on that roster of shame. Labour MPs Graham Allen, Chris Evans, Paul Farrelly, Barry Sheerman and Angela Smith all come from Leave constituencies, as does Plaid Cymru’s Jonathan Edwards. You could argue that they are all either very principled or very stupid: their constituencies all lie either in the North of England or in Wales. In other words, they are exactly the kind of places Ukip will be targeting under its new leader Paul Nuttall who is keen to hoover up all those frustrated working class voters who would once have been Labour.
It’s a measure of Labour’s sheer disastrousness that among the MPs who voted against the motion (which, remember, Labour actually proposed; the Conservatives merely added an amendment) were three members of its own front bench. If Labour were a remotely serious force in politics, commentators might well be asking how this kind of dissension squared with the party’s principle of collective responsibility. As it is, no one really expects Labour to do anything other than run around like headless chickens.
AS FOR all the 51 Scottish MPs who voted against the motion it remains an unfathomable mystery that while Ukip, with upwards of four million voters, still has just one representative at Westminster, the SNP has 51, gleaned from a voter base around one third that of Ukip’s. Is Scottish chippiness really such a threat that we need to buy them off by giving them the power to hijack our democracy in this way?
Then again perhaps we shouldn’t be too downhearted. The truth is that yesterday’s vote marked a great victory both for democracy and the Brexit cause, which you could argue was snatched from the jaws of near defeat.
Remember, that original motion was originally designed by Labour as a trap to force the Government into weakening its negotiating hand with the EU by outlining the details to Parliament in advance. Combined with the machinations of the Left-leaning, Remain-friendly judges of the Supreme Court, it looked as if the Brexit faction within the Government had been caught on the back foot.
Instead, the Government pulled off what has been described as a “political masterstroke”, by calling Labour’s bluff and daring them to vote against accepting the result of the referendum and triggering Article 50. No thanks to those MPs who voted against but our exit from the EU is looking a lot more likely than it did only a week ago. Poor Ken Clarke with his Hush Puppies and his jazz. He’s looking more like yesterday’s man than ever…
‘The Government called Labour’s bluff’