Michael Gove ridicules SNP vote for a No Deal Brexit

As they threatened last week the SNP effectively voted for a "No Deal" Brexit yesterday. 

Britain had already left the EU nearly a year ago, and the trading relationship we had previously had with EU countries expires at 11pm tonight.
 
After a deal between the UK and EU negotiators was finally reached on Christmas Eve this was the deal on the table. Imagining that any other deal was still an option yesterday would have been pure fantasy - there was no way that some alternative deal could have been negotiated and ratified before the transition period expires in a few hours' time.

In the real world there were two options available to parliament yesterday: to ratify the real deal which was actually on the table, or a "No Deal" Brexit.

The SNP went into the lobbies against the deal - and if they had won that vote we would have had a "no deal" Brexit tomorrow. The SNP had previously described the possibility of a "No Deal" Brexit as "catastrophic" and said it would cost 100,000 jobs in Scotland and "plunge the economy into recession". One SNP member of parliament, Joanna Cherry, even went to court to try to get a ruling that the PM should go to jail if there was a "No deal" Brexit.

Yet that's what the SNPs MPs all voted for yesterday.

Michael Gove had some fun at their expense ...



I disagree with Sir Kier Starmer on many things, but unlike his predecessor or the SNP leadership he is a "grown-up" politician and he recognised this and whipped his MPs to vote for the deal, which most of them did. 

As Sir Keir pointed out, the SNP and other "Remainers" who voted against the deal on the table were voting for a "No Deal" Brexit.

They were voting for something they did not want (and indeed knew would be disastrous for Scotland and England) and were relying on other MPs to vote more responsibly and save them from the consequences of what would otherwise be an utterly disastrous vote. 

I do not often post with approval any part of a speech by a leader of the Labour party so make the most of it, but here is a clip of him making the point:

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