Major the Brexit hypocrite
Tory backlash as he urges MPs to ignore referendum in a free vote
SIR John Major faced a ferocious Tory backlash last night after urging Parliament to rise up and block Brexit.
The former Prime Minister said MPs and unelected peers should set aside the referendum result and decide for themselves whether leaving the eU was the right thing to do.
He urged Theresa May to give MPs a free vote on the final Brexit deal later this year – allowing them to send her back to the negotiating table, order a second referendum or even ‘reject’ Brexit outright.
He said Mrs May should ‘let Parliament decide, or put the issue back to the British people’. Asked about a second referendum, Sir John said he would ‘prefer Parliament to decide the issue’.
His comments were linked to what critics said was a co-ordinated campaign to undermine Brexit. High-profile anti-Brexit interventions have been made in recent days by Jeremy Corbyn and former Whitehall mandarin Sir Martin Donnelly. Tony Blair will use a speech in Brussels today to step up calls for a second referendum, in what appears to be a concerted push by diehard Remainers to overturn the 2016 referendum result.
Tory MP Bernard Jenkin said Brexit was facing a co-ordinated campaign by members of an elite who had never accepted the referendum result: ‘ This is the establishment fightback against what they regard as a peasants’ revolt.’
Sir John famously refused to allow a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty which handed the eU sweeping new powers. He also rejected calls to allow MPs a free vote.
And in the run-up to the eU referendum, Sir John made several predictions which turned out to be wrong.
Three days before the referendum, he said the result would be ‘irrevocable’, adding that Britain was ‘too proud and independent a nation to go crawling back to europe’. He also claimed it was ‘ overwhelmingly likely’ that Brexit would spark a second Scottish independence referendum, and that Brexit would result in a ‘shrunken economy’. In fact, the economy has grown in every quarter since the vote to leave.
But in a speech in the grand surroundings of London’s Somerset House yesterday, Sir John said Mrs May should give MPs a free vote on the deal she brings back from Brussels.
MPs and peers ‘must decide the issue on the basis of their own conscience’ – rather than adhering to the result of the referendum. He said they must decide whether they ‘really do believe that the outcome of the negotiations is in the best interests of the people they serve’.
Sir John said that by 2021, when the Brexit transition ends, ‘no-one can truly know what the will of the people will be’.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, a Maastricht rebel, said Sir John appeared to have had a conversion to the idea of free votes ‘on the road to Brussels’. Fellow eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash accused Sir John of ‘sheer hypocrisy’, and of ‘undermining the Prime Minister’, while Jacob Rees-Mogg said Sir John’s speech was ‘riddled with errors and humbug’. The prominent eurosceptic said his obsession with europe had led to Black Wednesday, producing results that ‘destroyed business in this country and ruined families with very high interest rates’.
Mr Rees-Mogg added: ‘He got it wrong in the past and he has got it wrong again.’
Sir John said: ‘Of course, the “will of the people” can’t be ignored, but Parliament has a duty also to consider the well-being of the people. No-one voted for higher prices and poorer public services, but that is what they may get.’
He said voters had ‘every right’ to change their minds. He has previously ruled out the idea of a second referendum but yesterday said it could be a solution.
Pro-Remain figures rushed to congratulate Sir John. Within minutes, Lord Mandelson sent out an email saying: ‘John Major is right to say MPs should get a free vote on final Brexit deal.’ Labour MP Chuka Umunna described Sir John’s intervention as ‘hugely significant’. Nick Clegg said: ‘It’s high time that Parliament, and not a hard-Brexit clique, spoke for our country.’
‘Riddled with errors and humbug’
that Britain used to be close to the US. ‘Now we are becoming a lesser actor,’ he claimed. ‘I wunt my country to be influential, not isolated.’ He wunted us to be richer, not poorer, too, which by unhappy chance has an echo of the Prayer Book’s marriage vows. The inconvenient fact for Remainers is that since the Leave vote, our economy has been hopping along rather cheerfully. Sir John argued that this was an artificial ‘sweet spot – it won’t last’. He seemed to be cross both with Brexiteers for being intransigent, and with the May Government for making concessions in its negotiations. With the air of a greybeard whose own years had only ever seen the most devoted solidarity, he lamented that the Cabinet disagreed about Brexit. ‘I don’t say this to be critical,’ he said in that Dalek bleat. ‘I take no pleasure in speaking out as I am today.’ Oh come off it, buster. You were loving the attention. He argued that a second referendum might be needed in 2021. Then came a line worthy of the most creepy undertaker in Victorian fiction: ‘Some voters will have left us.’ Yes, folks, he was happily saying that some Leave voters will by 2021 be in their coffins, stiffer than … well, let’s not get in to that. What did Edwina see in him?