We should thank the Conservatives for a couple of things. First, they have brought Alex Neil back to the front bench. Secondly, they caused Neil Findlay to describe Willie Rennie accurately, which cannot be said to have happened in the past.
We have a UK Government that is in contempt of Parliament, for the first time in history. We have a UK Government that has published legal advice—again something without precedent.
We also have—oh, the greatest of ironies, I suggest to Mr Tomkins—a UK Parliament that has taken back control, inflicting three Government defeats in one day. Last night, 26 Tory MPs backed Dominic Grieve’s amendment, including former Cabinet ministers and May loyalists such as Damian Green and Michael Fallon. The end cannot be far away. All that is the result of the ructions in the Conservative Party over the UK’s relationship with Europe.
So why are the Scottish Tories following the last-man-standing approach to politics? Their unapologetic support for the Prime Minister and her withdrawal agreement is ludicrous, not because of opposition to Theresa May’s deal, and not because the UK Government’s own analysis shows that our economy will be made weaker by the deal, but because the Prime Minister will be defeated by her own side. The Prime Minister is going to lose the vote next Tuesday, and yet her last defenders, and those of her deal, are the Scottish Tories. What do they not understand about what is going on? I can only observe that Adam Tomkins took no interventions today because he does not believe a word of what he said in this debate.
Next Tuesday at 7 pm, what will be happening at the House of Commons will not be about socialists, nationalists, Liberal Democrats or even the Democratic Unionist Party. What will be happening at Westminster will be about the fissure in the Tory Party: a party that never could agree on Europe. From Churchill to Theresa May, every Tory leader has been ripped asunder by their own party over Europe. Following yesterday’s farce, few are convinced that Theresa May will still be Prime Minister by Tuesday night. It is her deal. It will lose and she will go.
The rejection of the Prime Minister’s deal next week—a rejection triggered by the revolt in her own party—will expose the profoundly flawed nature of the June 2016 referendum, which was called not to end the corrosiveness of the European question across the UK, but to end the corrosiveness of the European question within the Tory party. It has not done so.
Britons voted to leave, narrowly, but no specific version of Brexit was put to the people. Whatever the grievance—and there were plenty—voting leave encapsulated every reason to rebel. One recent poll suggested that 75 per cent of the electorate say the Prime Minister’s deal is
“nothing like that which was promised two years ago”.
That is why so many take exception to the Prime Minister's assertion that her deal delivers on the referendum—so many Tories. The Prime Minister’s deal means that the UK would be transformed from rule maker to rule taker. It enshrines a democratic deficit and a further loss of sovereignty that her party will never accept.
There is to be a backstop on the border in the island of Ireland. As we know from today's published legal advice, there is no obvious way out of that backstop. It means protracted and potentially never-ending negotiations with the EU27. It is, as the Brexiteer Dominic Raab stated this morning, a trap.
One certainty about next week’s meaningful vote is that the majority of the House of Commons does not want a hard Brexit in which the UK crashes out of the EU next March with no transition period, no trading arrangements in place and monumental economic chaos. The UK Government’s own financial assessment says that every citizen will be worse off.
Here at Holyrood last Thursday, David Lidington accepted that slower economic growth means less revenue. That means less money for public services. To coin the current language of cuts, Brexit means extending austerity, not reducing it. So much for the £350 million a week for the NHS.
All that was neatly summed up by Sam Gyimah, who resigned as a Tory minister last Friday—the seventh minister to go since the deal was published. He left saying that voting for the Prime Minister’s deal would mean that Britain would be surrendering
“our voice, our vote and our veto”.
What is the alternative to the UK failing to agree? Crashing out on 29 March next year does not need to happen. That will not happen if the UK Parliament passes a new law erasing that deadline. It is now a question of how MPs will act to stop a hard Brexit, not if or when they will do so. However, as the UK Parliament cannot agree anything, other than opposition to a hard Brexit, it is the people who must determine the future. Many sensible Tories are making exactly that case.
Jo Johnson, the brother of Boris, but a pro-European, resigned, saying that the deal represents
“a failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis”.
For the avoidance of doubt, that is not a compliment on Mrs May’s negotiating skills. Mr Johnson is now calling for the deal to be put to the general public in a people’s vote. It is to be hoped that the other Johnson once again campaigns for leave. Boris is no longer box office. Last night in the House of Commons, he was taken apart—by his own side.
John McDonnell, Labour’s shadow chancellor, rather than dissing a peoples vote, describes it as increasingly inevitable.
Justine Greening, the PM’s former education secretary, said this morning on the “Today” programme that trusting the people may, in the end, be the only way to break the gridlock in Parliament.
Such a vote must test those real alternatives. There may be some consensus in Westminster for a customs-union single-market Norway option. Influential Tories, led by Oliver Letwin and a dozen more, support that. The Norway option is perhaps best described as moving house but staying in the neighbourhood, although that also includes losing one’s seat on the neighbourhood watch committee. Yet Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, says that there will be implications for the financial industry, including here in Scotland.
On Tuesday, the UK Parliament will fail to agree, and then the only real alternative is for the people of the nations and regions of this United Kingdom to determine our future. That is the only way forward. With six days to go, there is one certainty: the Prime Minister’s deal is dead at the hands of her own party, but among its few defenders remain those in the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. They look like lemmings rushing headlong for the cliff edge, demanding leadership, and I remain staggered at sensible and intelligent Scottish Tories such as Adam Tomkins joining them as they plunge into the abyss.