NO LAUGHING MATTER
At the 11th hour, these Remain MPs abandon the Tory party as May faces critical Brexit talks. But what on earth is there to smile about? This is...
DEFIANT Theresa May insisted she is “doing the right thing” for Britain last night after three anti-Brexit Tories quit the party and called on others to follow them.
Remainer rebels Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston joined forces with Labour defectors railing against the Prime Minister’s EU exit strategy.
The Tory turncoats timed their exit from the party to cause maximum damage
to Mrs May, issuing a joint statement shortly before the Prime Minister faced questions in the Commons then headed to Brussels for crucial talks with Eurocrats.
As they walked out of the party, Mrs May said: “Ending that membership after four decades was never going to be easy.
“But by delivering on our manifesto commitment and implementing the decision of the British people we are doing the right thing for our country.”
Ms Allen claimed there “won’t be a Tory party to go back to” if the new group does its job right.
But she admitted the 11 independents are clinging on to their seats because they would be “crushed” in by-elections now.
The South Cambridgeshire MP said there was a “significant number” of MPs from different parties considering joining the group.
Former minister Phillip Lee “probably, possibly, maybe” will jump ship along with peers and council leaders but no ministers are ready to quit, she said.
The defecting trio claimed Mrs May’s handling of Britain’s exit from the European Union has been “disastrous” and said there had been a “dismal failure to stand up to the hard line” Eurosceptics in the party.
But Tory MPs said The Independent Group wanted to stop Brexit and warned the Government it must “deliver the result of the EU Referendum”.
Sir Patrick McLoughlin, a former party chairman, said: “We will just have to get on with the job.
“We have had people leave the party before.”
Andy Wigmore, of Leave.EU, said the three MPs “jumped before they were pushed” and called on them to stand down and trigger by-elections in their constituencies.
Tory ex-minister Nick Boles said he agreed with “so much” of what his ex-colleagues said in their resignation letter but he was “not ready to give up on Conservatives yet”.
Former prime minister David Cameron said: “Sad that three talented Tory MPs have left the party. I respect their decision, but disagree with them.”
Tory MP Michael Fabricant said the new group was “an anti-Brexit Party”. Sad to see them go but the Government must deliver the result of EU Referendum.”
The group will back proposals demanding a second referendum in next week’s Commons votes on Brexit. Dr Wollaston said: “We are now a bigger grouping than the DUP and if she wants to get her deal through she could, by making it conditional on a second referendum to confirm it.”
Ms Allen dubbed the Tory breakaway group the “three amigos” and said they could “no longer act as bystanders”.
They made the decision to quit after seven Labour MPs announced on Monday morning that they were forming a new group to tackle Westminster’s “broken politics”. They were later joined by an eighth, Joan Ryan, who said Labour had become “infected” with anti-Semitism.
Ms Allen added: “We are about creating something better that is bang smack in the centre-ground of British politics that people out there want. “This is about the future, this is not about going back.”
Ms Soubry said she would not stay in the Conservatives to “skirmish on the margins when the truth is the battle is over and the other side has won”. She said: “I’m not leaving the Conservative Party, it has left us.”
The former defence minister urged ministers to quit in order to vote against a no-deal Brexit.
She said: “I’m hoping that this will really concentrate some minds of colleagues in the Conservative Party that we know share our concerns and also share our values.”
Mrs May admitted Brexit had strained the party but insisted the Government must deliver on the result of the EU referendum.
AMOOD of turmoil has gripped Westminster. A major realignment in the British political landscape seems underway. The traditional two-party system between Labour and the Conservatives, which has prevailed for almost a century, now appears to be crumbling. Both the Prime Minister and the Labour leader, already beset by growing rebellions and dwindling authority, are now facing significant splits in their own ranks.
After the defection of eight moderate Labour MPs at the start of the week, three progressive Tories yesterday announced their resignations to join the newly formed Independent Group in the Commons. Like the Labour splitters, none of this Conservative trio is a household name. Only Anna Soubry, the MP for Broxtowe, had served as a minister, while both Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston were semidetached from their party even before their departure, the former because of her concerns about welfare reform, the latter because of health policy and taxation.
But what has really motivated the three of them is their ferocious opposition to Brexit, summed up in the words of Soubry after the 2016 referendum, the result of which she described as a “terrible, terrible mistake”. Such an outlook led the trio to become committed supporters of the so-called “People’s Vote” campaign to overturn the outcome of the 2016 ballot. “We need to go back to the public,” declared Allen, even though the public had already made its view clear in the biggest democratic exercise in British history.
IN THE current atmosphere of crisis generated by Brexit, the arrival of the Independents has electrified the media and shaken up politics. Within just three days of its launch, the 11-strong group already has more MPs than Ulster’s Democratic Unionist Party, which has been holding the Government to ransom ever since Theresa May’s botched general election in 2017. With just two more defections, it will overtake the Liberal Democrats. Given that 172 Labour MPs voted against Corbyn in a confidence vote in 2016, the Independents could soon have 40 members in Parliament.
There has also been a powerful impact on the public. By mid-afternoon yesterday, the fledgling group had attracted no fewer than 115,000 followers on Twitter, while an extraordinary opinion poll put its support on 14 per cent, with Labour down to a dismal 26 per cent.
Inevitably, in view of this early success, comparisons have been made with the launch of the SDP in 1981. Indeed, supporters of the Independents hope that the group will achieve as much as the SDP, which gained a quarter of the popular vote in alliance with the Liberals at the 1983 general election, and reshaped British politics by dragging Labour back towards sanity from the lunatic fringes.
Yet the parallel with the Social Democrats is profoundly misleading. The current split is very different from that of 1981. For a start, the SDP was led by big distinguished figures like David Owen and Shirley Williams. The Independents have no one of that calibre. More importantly, the SDP had a set of coherent, mainstream policies. In contrast, there is nothing concrete or original about the Independent Group’s pronouncements. That is because all that really unites the gang of 11 is their fanatical worship of Brussels and their determination to reverse the 2016 referendum result. In fact, the term “Independents” is a misnomer, because this lot do not believe in British independence at all.
Despite the media hysteria this week, the group is not a new political force but another manifestation of the establishment revolt against Brexit. The Independents are Europhile Central or Continuity Remain, dedicated to the same elitist cause of trying to defy the will of the people. For all their blather about change, they are focused on maintaining the status quo of Britain’s EU membership. They trumpet their centrist credentials, but in reality there is nothing moderate about their attachment to the destruction of our freedom at the hands of the Brussels empire. They are the true ideologues, pretending it is extreme to seek the return of British sovereignty from an unelected, unaccountable foreign bureaucracy.
TELLINGLY, none of the pro-Brexit Labour moderates, such as Frank Field, have joined the Independents. Like other Brexiteers, the Labour Leavers know that real democracy means respect rather than contempt for the 2016 result. The Independents are right to attack narrow tribalism and leadership personality cults, but, in their undemocratic devotion to the EU, they are engaged in their own form of zealotry.
As this week’s splits have indicated, traditional British politics is broken. Yet it has been shattered by the domination of the conventional progressive orthodoxy, precisely the creed that the Independents want to uphold. The establishment’s arrogant willingness to defy the public on Brexit is matched by an enthusiasm for unprecedented levels of mass immigration, a reluctance to lock up criminals, an impulse to meddle in foreign conflicts, and a selfregarding eagerness to splurge colossal sums on foreign aid.
The trio of defecting Tories blathered yesterday about the need “to put our country’s interests first”. But if they were to achieve their goal of stopping Brexit, it would be a disaster for our national liberty.
‘Ferocious opposition to referendum result’