He who sups with the devil needs a long spoon ...

I see that the Labour party, in the latest of their long series of U-Turns about the EU, are talking of supporting amendments by backbench Conservatives to the EU withdrawal bill.

I am all in favour of proper scrutiny for this bill and in particular to ensure that the enormous powers that it gives are not subject to "mission creep" - for example I am pleased that there is a sunset clause ensuring those powers expire two years after Britain leaves the EU.

Similarly I am all in favour of the British Parliament having the final say on the deal under which Britain leaves.

But I hope people are very careful what they vote for. If parliament actually does veto a deal, the way the EU's Article 50 is written - with a two-year countdown to exit which it takes the unanimous agreement of the other 27 member states to extend - means that the most likely result of such a vote would be  Britain crashing out of the EU with no deal at all.

I'm afraid the previous record of Labour oppositions in voting for whatever would be most damaging to the government of the day regardless of how much damage is also done to the country, leads me to suspect that they might welcome the chance to put Britain in that position so they could blame the Tories for it.

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