Movement on Brexit
The prime minister has gone to Brussels this evening having obtained "legally binding" assurances that the EU will not seek to keep Britain in the "backstop" indefinitely, according to her deputy in all but name, Cabinet office minister David Lidington.
Mr Lidington told the House of Commons this evening that the changes "strengthen and improve" the deal, and the UK and EU's future relationship. But he said further negotiations are taking place as the PM is still meeting EU officials in Strasbourg.
MPs will vote on the deal with these new assurances tomorrow. I suspect the vote may be much closer than had been expected a day or so ago.
There is no doubt that the tectonic plates at Westminster are shifting. This time the deal is not going to go down by 200 votes as it did last time. Whether things will have shifted enough to get it through I do not know.
Let me lay my cards on the table: I hope that MPs vote for the deal tomorrow.
What I heard during the referendum campaign from Leave campaigners and the people who were planning to vote leave was that they wanted to "take back control." When I asked people what they actually meant by that almost all of them said one or more of the following six things
The deal as it now stands delivers
This deal delivers four of the things Leavers said they were campaigning for immediately, and once we have paid the so-called "Divorce Bill" and are clear of the "backstop" it delivers all of them.
It's not perfect.
We were never going to get a perfect deal - unwinding forty year's of integration was never going to be simple or straightforward, and Article 50, which was designed to make it difficult for a member country to leave the EU, has succeeded in that objective.
But it delivers what the majority of the British electorate have twice voted for - in the referendum and in the 2017 election when the vast majority of MPs were elected on a promise to honour the referendum result - in a way which British business organisations say they can live with and will not wreck the economy.
This isn't a bad deal. It does not make us a "vassal state." It does deliver Brexit. It's time to make the deal and move on.
Mr Lidington told the House of Commons this evening that the changes "strengthen and improve" the deal, and the UK and EU's future relationship. But he said further negotiations are taking place as the PM is still meeting EU officials in Strasbourg.
MPs will vote on the deal with these new assurances tomorrow. I suspect the vote may be much closer than had been expected a day or so ago.
There is no doubt that the tectonic plates at Westminster are shifting. This time the deal is not going to go down by 200 votes as it did last time. Whether things will have shifted enough to get it through I do not know.
Let me lay my cards on the table: I hope that MPs vote for the deal tomorrow.
What I heard during the referendum campaign from Leave campaigners and the people who were planning to vote leave was that they wanted to "take back control." When I asked people what they actually meant by that almost all of them said one or more of the following six things
- They wanted control of our laws.
- They wanted control of our borders
- They wanted Britain out of the Common Fisheries policy
- They wanted Britain out of the Common Agricultural policy
- They wanted an end to ongoing large net payments into the EU budget.
- They wanted Britain to have the freedom to set our own trade policies.
And whatever they may say now, virtually none of the people who campaigned for leave during the referendum said at that time that they wanted a "no deal" or "WTO" Brexit.
Leave campaigners promised that Britain would find it easy to agree a trade deal with the EU.
They have no mandate to claim now that the electorate voted for a "no deal" Brexit. If they wanted such a mandate they should have said that's what they wanted during the referendum campaign.
They didn't. And if they had, there is a good chance that they would have lost.
The deal as it now stands delivers
- An end to the power of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and European Parliament over UK domestic laws.
- An end to freedom of movement
- Britain out of the Common Fisheries policy
- Britain out of the Common Agricultural policy
- No more large payments to the EU budget once we have paid the one-off "Divorce Bill"
- Freedom to set our own trade policies if the backstop is not triggered or once we are out of it, if it does have to be triggered.
This deal delivers four of the things Leavers said they were campaigning for immediately, and once we have paid the so-called "Divorce Bill" and are clear of the "backstop" it delivers all of them.
It's not perfect.
We were never going to get a perfect deal - unwinding forty year's of integration was never going to be simple or straightforward, and Article 50, which was designed to make it difficult for a member country to leave the EU, has succeeded in that objective.
But it delivers what the majority of the British electorate have twice voted for - in the referendum and in the 2017 election when the vast majority of MPs were elected on a promise to honour the referendum result - in a way which British business organisations say they can live with and will not wreck the economy.
This isn't a bad deal. It does not make us a "vassal state." It does deliver Brexit. It's time to make the deal and move on.
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