European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

In opening this debate, the deputy Prime Minister cautioned against voting for amendment (a) because he said that it would alter the relationship between the Executive and the Parliament. That is exactly why we need to vote for amendment (a). We must alter that relationship because we are now in a situation whereby the level of dysfunction and inertia in our political system is without parallel. We are in the midst of a political crisis that is mirrored only by our inability to do anything about it through the normal processes of government, so we must now take back control of the agenda.

We are in a bizarre situation whereby the Government have brought their proposals twice to this Parliament, and twice they have been roundly rejected. Now, not only do the Government say that they will not bring their proposals back for a third time—they are taking their ball home with them, it seems—but they say that they refuse to change their mind and vary those proposals so that there might be a route to a majority. In those circumstances, there is no option left but for people other than those in the Government to take control of the situation.

Make no mistake, if amendment (a) is passed, it will most definitely be an indictment and a censure of this Government and the way in which they have conducted themselves over the last two and a half years. What we need to know from the Government is whether they are prepared to try to win back our trust—whether they will enter into this process with good faith in the attempt to see whether there is a majority in this House that they can be part of, or whether they just want us to exhaust ourselves running around in circles, so that they can come along two weeks later and bring plan A back again to be defeated.

As others have remarked, we should have been engaged in this process two and a half years ago, rather than leaving it to this last moment, but the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) put his finger on the button when he said that the problem is that, from the word go, the result of the 2016 referendum was hijacked by the winning side and used to close down any debate about how the mandate should be interpreted or what it actually meant. Therefore, for the past two years, there has been a dialogue that has involved only the Government, the ERG and the Democratic Unionist party. Thankfully, we are not yet in a situation whereby that political axis commands a majority either in this House or in the country. I appeal to the Government for the umpteenth time to reach out beyond their own narrow political confines and see whether it is possible to build a political consensus in this country that can put our fractured politics back together.

Time and again, we have heard the mantra of 17.4 million, and we really need to confront this point. In a democratic society, people do not just get one vote; they get a series of votes. In a democratic society, each vote qualifies and updates the ones that came before. What we need to know is what the views of the people are now, not what they were three years ago. I firmly believe that, although 17.4 million people voted for us to leave the European Union, they did not vote to endorse the prospectus that the Government have brought to this House, and they did not vote for the Government’s harsh interpretation of that decision. For example, I do not think that 17.4 million people voted to deny themselves and their children the ability to move freely around the European Union. I just do not believe it; I think that was part of the hijack.

Most importantly, however, it is clear to anyone who wants to see that many of those people have changed their minds. In a democratic society, people have the right to do that, so we need to test the decision again, and that means we will have to put this matter back to the people. We do not need a short break in this process—a short extension—to tweak what is already there; we need a fundamental rethink. We need to go back to the drawing board. We need to scrap the phoney red lines that were imposed by this Government and see if it is possible to come up with a new proposal. To do that, and to give time for that to be put before the people, we will need a serious extension to this process.

Thankfully, the European Union—President Tusk and others—has indicated that it would be happy to look at a much longer extension and at going back to negotiations if the Government change their red lines: their restrictive insistence on what the agreement had to do. So that option is there, but if there are complications in getting that level of extension, the answer is quite simple, and the power lies with us. All we need to do is to revoke article 50—not as a means of getting closure on the whole process but to take back control of it and give ourselves whatever time we need to formulate proposals and to democratically put them before the people.

Of course, we will go beyond 22 May and will therefore get into having the opportunity to elect representatives to represent us in the European Union, of which we are still part. What is wrong with that? How can it be that a bunch of people elected in a democratic election are so scared of having one in two months’ time? Let us put this back to the people in an election. That will give us the opportunity to begin to redefine the narrative in this country—to try to explain to people that we gain most by common endeavour. We need to put hope in front of hate and to put hope back where there is currently despair. We can take a positive message to the people in those elections. My party stands ready to do that, and I do not see why others are not ready to contest them, too.

When we get the opportunity to run these elections in Scotland, you can bet, for sure, that we will also be taking the opportunity to explain to the people of Scotland that this process could have been avoided for them and they did not need to go through this if they had had the confidence to take the power for themselves, take back control and become a normal independent country like the others in this world.