‘Let’s move on’ says Johnson as MPS back Brexit deal
● SNP claims UK is ‘blindly hurtling towards the cliff-edge’ as countdown to leaving the EU begins
The UK is set to leave the EU on 31 January with Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal after MPS gave their backing to legislation in the first vote of the new Parliament.
The Prime Minister said it was “time to act together as one reinvigorated nation” and called for Leave and Remain to be retired as political labels.
MPS voted to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill at second reading by 358 votes to 234, a majority of 124, giving Mr Johnson a big victory before Christmas. As the result
was read out, one Tory MP was heard shouting: “Back of the net”.
It underlined the continuing divisions within Labour over Brexit, even after the party’s devastating election defeat, with six MPS breaking the whip to support the deal, and 32 not voting at all – although some were excused for personal reasons.
Opening the debate yesterday morning, Mr Johnson told MPS: “This is the time when we move on and discard the old labels of Leave and Remain.
“In fact, the very words seem tired to me – as defunct as Bigenders and Little-enders, or Montagues and Capulets at the end of the play.
“Now is the time to act together as one reinvigorated nation, one United Kingdom, filled with renewed confidence in our national destiny and determined at last to take advantage of the opportunities that now lie before us.”
But he was attacked by opposition leaders for watering down commitments to take unaccompanied child refugees from Europe, and removing legal guarantees within the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on workers’ rights and parliamentary scrutiny of trade negotiations.
The revised legislation also imposes a legal guarantee that the post-brexit transition phase will end in December 2020 whether a trade agreement has been reached with Brussels or not, leading critics to warn of a new risk of a nodeal scenario.
Mr Johnson told MPS there was “no possibility of an exten sion” to the implementation phase, and said his government would seek “an ambitious free trade agreement with no alignment” with EU rules. “This vision of the United Kingdom’s independence, a vision that inspires so many, is now if this Parliament, this new Parliament allows, only hours from our grasp,” he said.
“The oven is on, so to speak, it is set at gas mark 4, we can have it done by lunchtime, or late lunch.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn labelled the government’s handling of Brexit as a “national embarrassment” and confirmed his party would oppose the “terrible” deal.
Mr Corbyn called the removal of sections of the legislation relating to offering sanctuary to orphans and unaccompanied children “nothing short of an absolute disgrace”.
“Throughout the last Parliament, and for his whole life, and I was talking to him last night, my good friend Lord Dubs has worked tirelessly to ensure children affected by the worst aspects of global injustice can be given sanctuary in this country,” the Labour leader said. “Now this government in its first week in office has ripped up those very hardwon commitments.”
He added: “I simply say this: coming to up to Christmas shame on this government for abandoning children.”
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said Mr Johnson was “blindly hurtling towards the cliff-edge” with his “deeply damaging” Brexit plans.
Mr Blackford said independence was the only way of Scotland
avoiding being taken out of the EU, and noted that under the terms of the Brexit deal, the Northern Irish people have a say over the terms of their relationship with the bloc.
He took on the government over its insistence that the 2014 independence referendum had been a “once in a generation event”, arguing that there was nothing in the Edinburgh Agreement setting out the terms of that vote that ruled out indyref2.
“Let me just nail once and for all this issue about once in a generation, because it was made clear in the agreement signed between the two governments that it did not obstruct a future independence referendum,” Mr Blackford said.