Speech that transfixed the House

This is an edited version of the former Foreign Secretary’s speech

It was my privilege to collaborate with the Prime Minister in promoting Global Britain, a vision for this country that she set out with great clarity at Lancaster House on January 17 last year. A country eager, as she said, not just to do a bold, ambitious and comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU out of the customs union, out of the single market, but also to do new free trade deals around the world. I thought it was the right vision then, I think so today. But in the 18 months that have followed it is as though a fog of self-doubt has descended. We never actually turned that vision into a negotiating position in Brussels and we never made it into a negotiating offer. Instead we dithered and we burned through our negotiating capital, we agreed to hand over a £40billion exit fee with no discussion of our future economic relationship. We accepted the jurisdiction of the European Court over key aspects of the withdrawal agreement. And worst of all we allowed the question of the Northern Irish border, which had hitherto been assumed on all sides to be readily soluble, to become so politically charged as to dominate the debate. So after 18 months of stealthy retreat we have come from the bright certainties of Lancaster House to the Chequers agreement. You put them side by side. Lancaster House said laws will once again be made in Westminster. Chequers says there will be an ongoing harmonisation with a common EU rule book. Lancaster House said it would be wrong to comply with EU rules and regulations without having a vote on what those rules and regulations are. Chequers now makes us rule takers. Lancaster House said we don’t want anything that leaves us half in, half out and we do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave. Chequers says that we will remain in lockstep on goods and agrifoods and much more besides with disputes ultimately adjudicated by the European Court of Justice. Far from making laws in Westminster, there are large sectors in which ministers will have no power to initiate, innovate or even deviate. We are volunteering for economic vassalage, not just in goods and agrifoods but we will be forced to match EU arrangements on the environment and social affairs and much else besides. And given that in important ways, this is Bino or Brino or Brexit in name only, I am of course unable to accept it or support it as I said in the Cabinet session at Chequers. I am happy now to speak out against it and be able to do so. It is not too late to save Brexit. We have time in these negotiations, we have changed tack once and we can change again. The problem is not that we failed to make the case for a free trade agreement of the kind spelt out at Lancaster House, we haven’t even tried. We must try now because we will

not get another chance to get it right. And it is absolute nonsense to imagine, as I fear some of my colleagues do, that we can somehow afford to make a botched treaty now and then break and reset the bone later on. We have fully two-and-a-half years to make the technical preparations along with preparations for a world trade outcome – those preparations which we should now accelerate. We should not and need not be stampeded by anyone. But let us again aim explicitly for that glorious vision of Lancaster House – a strong, independent self-governing Britain that is genuinely open to the world. Not the miserable permanent limbo of Chequers. Not the democratic disaster of ongoing harmonisation with no way out and no say for the UK. We need to take one decision now before all others and that is to believe in this country and in what it can do. And to do free trade deals, proper free trade deals for the benefit and the prosperity of the British people. That was the vision of Brexit that we fought for, that was the vision, that the Prime Minister rightly described last year. That is the prize that is still attainable. There is time. And if the Prime Minister can fix that vision once again before us then I believe she can deliver a great Brexit for Britain, with a positive, self-confident approach that will unite this party, unite this house and unite this country as well.