I have listened carefully to the many esoteric legal arguments that have been advanced this evening. I am afraid that my comments will be far more prosaic and practical. I was on the remain side of the referendum debate, but, like most of my colleagues, I am now focusing on trying to secure the best possible deal, and that deal must centre on what a meaningful vote would be.
What does “a meaningful vote” mean? If it means “deal or no deal”, I think that that is a recipe for securing the best possible deal, but if it means “deal or no deal, or go back to the negotiating table”, perhaps indefinitely and with no time limit, I think that that is counterproductive. It would be detrimental, and would undermine our negotiating position. I am not suggesting for a second that that is the desire of those who promote a meaningful vote of that kind, but I think that that would be the effect.
Rather than looking only at the legal context, we need also to look at the political, economic and financial contexts. Of course the negotiations were always going to be difficult after 44 years of integration with the European Union, but they will also be difficult because of the European Union’s position. The EU clearly does not want us to leave, which is understandable for some of the reasons that I have given, but also, primarily, it does not want others to leave, and that must be its priority during the negotiations. If this were a marriage of equals and therefore a divorce of equals, that meaningful vote with those three different options would be fine, but that is not where we are. Of course, the EU also recognises that 75% of Members of Parliament were on the remain side of the argument.
We have to look at the EU’s perspective as well as that of the UK, which is why I think that the Prime Minister was not only right to offer a fair deal in her Florence speech, but right to say that we would not be afraid to walk away with no deal. That gives the EU one chance to get this right, whereas a meaningful vote-plus would give the EU many, many chances to get this right—to give the worst possible deal to get it right. Its incentive would be to put the worst deal on the table initially, knowing that Parliament would reject it and keep going back to the table. That cannot be the right negotiating position.
None of us wants to leave on the basis of no deal. WTO rules would clearly not be in the country’s interests, and it would not be in my own interests outside Parliament either. Nevertheless, I do not want to be locked into an organisation that simply will not let us leave other than on disadvantageous terms.