He was batting well against the Remain whingebags
PRO-BRUSSELS MPs were appalled – astonished! – that the Government should be heeding the will of the majority of electors (17.4 million) who voted for Brexit. What gobbles and quibbles we had from Remainers in the Commons yesterday when Brexit Secretary David Davis gave another update on progress.
‘The people are revolting, sir,’ says Ed Miliband’s valet. ‘Aren’t they just?’ says Popular Ed.
Mr Miliband and chums wanted us to stay in the Single Market (not much different from the EU). Much dancing on niceties was required to justify their position. They tweezered out their political positions with dainty detail and lawyerly sophistry – talk of White Papers and parliamentary procedure on treaties and the indigestible principle of prerogatives. Versus, er, the plain, unadorned fact of the referendum result.
Mr Davis: ‘We have a duty to respect the vote.’ Male Labour heckler: ‘No we don’t.’ My dears, you needed to be an elitist to understand these things. Perhaps you needed a knighthood, like barrister Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s new Brexit spokesman, who complained that the Government was ‘sidelining Parliament’. He claimed it was ‘wholly unacceptable’ not to give MPs the right to block the exiting process. Behind him on the Labour benches was a wad of parliamentarians doing their damndest to block the common people and – sigh – their vulgar desire for our country to be independent.
MOSTLY they were Blairites such as Helen Goodman ( Bishop Auckland in Durham, where 57 per cent supported Brexit) and Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton SE, 62 per cent for Brexit) but the anti-Blairite Paul Flynn (Newport W, where 56 per cent wanted Leave) joined them. He accused Brexit of being a pack of ‘lies’.
General election loser Miliband, not often seen here since that national bogwashing in 2015, rose to his hind teeth to complain bitterly that the May Government was heeding the result of the referendum. I know. Disgusting, innit? you wonder what the voters of Doncaster North (Mr Miliband’s seat) will make of his opposition to quitting the EU. They opted for Brexit by a measure of 69 per cent. How often does he go there?
The Government, honked Mr Miliband, ‘has no mandate’ for its Brexit. ‘Where is the mandate for its negotiation?’ Mr Davis, doing his best to remain polite, replied: ‘I can not believe my ears!’ He pointed out that the Brexit vote was ‘the largest mandate ever given’ to ministers.
Lining up alongside Mr Miliband was that other popular combo artist, Nick Clegg (Lib Dem, Sheffield Hallam). He resorted to a fancy word to try to baffle the democratic will. By what right did Theresa May ‘arrogate to herself the right to decide what Brexit means’? Sheffield, since you ask, voted 51 per cent for Brexit. ‘Here we go again,’ said Mr Davis, who was batting well against these whingebags. There was a difference between ‘accountability and micro-management’. He would follow conventions on parliamentary involvement but he would not tell MPs everything in his negotiating hand because that would not be in the national interest.
Anna Soubry (Con, Broxtowe, which voted by 54.6 per cent to quit the EU) feared that ‘ the Government is turning its back on the Single Market’. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, listening to Miss Soubry, frowned and drummed his fingers on the back of the front bench.
Refusing to act on the instruction of the British people, said Mr Davis with understatement, would create ‘a constitutional problem’. Labour heckler: ‘No it wouldn’t.’
The weakness in the Remainers’ approach was that no one really believes they want the best from Brexit. They want it to fail, so that they can return to the EU. They tittered theatrically at Mr Davis’s use of ‘micro-management’. Such elaborate scoffing!
That tribune of the working masses, Emily Thornberry, sat on Labour’s front bench with a pert pout on her trouty lips and said ‘process, process, process!’, a refrain she repeated three times. I don’t have a clue what she meant, but then I’m not from Islington.