Pro-Europe peers are playing with fire
WE don’t ‘accept’ that the war is over because it is not over. The fall of Singapore was not the end of the war: when the Brits emerged from the bushes, they went on to win. Thank God.
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the latest outburst from Lord Adonis, a man whose only elected office was as a Lib Dem councillor, but who is now leading the proEU wing in the House of Lords.
A self-confessed saboteur, he appears to be in the grip of a Brexit-induced meltdown, having already compared leaving the EU to Nazi appeasement, the Cold War and the Spanish Inquisition.
Like Lord Mandelson – who wrote to Michel Barnier recently to pledge his loyalty to the EU – and Lord Kinnock (two of around 20 peers in line for hefty Brussels pensions) there is no question where his true loyalties lie.
The same is true of the Europhile Lib Dems who have just 12 MPs but more than 100 peers at their disposal – a disastrous legacy of the Coalition years.
The question this week – as the EU Withdrawal Bill enters the Lords – is how many others will follow them? The early signs, from a report out today from the House of Lords Constitution Committee, are far from auspicious. Peers have bluntly called this flagship law ‘constitutionally unacceptable’ and ‘fundamentally flawed’.
Predictably, the committee is dominated by opponents of Brexit. The chairman, Baroness Taylor, is a former Labour cabinet minister who helped sign away vast powers to Brussels. Lord MacGregor says the referendum result should not be regarded as ‘necessarily final’. And Lord Morgan says Brexit is a disaster and insults millions of Leave voters by describing their decisions as ‘ill informed’.
Meanwhile, a shroud-waving second committee warns of energy shortages and price rises after we leave.
To all these, the Mail has a simple message: the referendum campaign is over and you lost. Any attempt to undermine the result – or demand a second simply because they didn’t like the first – would display blatant contempt for democracy.