By Jamie Stone MP, the Liberal Democrats' Scottish Affairs spokesperson
What the passage of yesterday’s amendment makes very clear is that it is time for the Prime Minister to request an extension to Article 50 and take a No Deal Brexit off the table.
Parliament has only sat on a handful of Saturdays since the end of WWII. This is an occurrence reserved for the most fraught of circumstance and there is no question that a bid to ram through a devastating Brexit deal with little scrutiny merits such an occasion.
Now I am a committed Remainer and I believe that there is no Brexit deal as good as the one currently we have, but there were a number of significant faults with this deal in particular. First of all, while it might have reduced the risk of medicine shortages after October 31, it offers no guarantee of a deal in the long run. All it does is move the No Deal cliff edge to the end of 2020. All an unscrupulous PM and his hardline allies needs to do is fail to present a Free Trade Agreement to parliament next year, the transition lapses and then we have no deal.
The second major reason is the threat that it poses to the integrity of the UK. Last year Ruth Davidson and David Mundell wrote to the Prime Minister that they “could not support any deal that creates a border of any kind in the Irish Sea and undermines the Union, beyond what currently exists”. They were right then and nothing has changed since.
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The case against independence is still strong, but the deal that the Prime Minister proposes risks undermining it. We all know that the SNP will use any issue to build the grievance on which their case is built. This deal risks playing into their hands.
Likewise, from their comments in the press and in Parliament, even the DUP were appalled by the way that Northern Ireland was being treated. It is safe to say that Arlene Foster can be added to the list of women who Boris Johnson has lied to and abandoned.
Liberal Democrats will continue to oppose Brexit. We know that it would hammer the economy, cost jobs across the country and sell workers down the river.
This makes it all the more astonishing that members of the Labour Party are shaping up to back it. These MPs risk throwing away their party’s progressive heritage to vote for a far harder Brexit than the deal negotiated by Theresa May that Parliament rejected. What’s more, with Corbyn supposed to have promised leave supporting MPs that the whip would not be withdrawn, there’s more than a hint of tipping the wink going on at the highest level of the Labour Party.
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My colleague Jo Swinson is quite right to demand the Prime Minister obey the law and send a letter asking for an extension to Article 50. Then, once the extension is secured, I hope that all MPs will think deeply about their constituents and recognise that what we need to do now is take this back to the people.
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