In rising to speak this evening, I find myself, unusually, in disagreement with my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and in agreement —in part at least—with the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson). I am in agreement only in part because he said in his speech earlier today that we bandy around phrases such as “our precious Union” and “the integrity of our Union” quite a lot in this House, but it is quite clear that not everybody understands what is meant by the “Union” or its “integrity”, so much so that I worry that the meaning—the importance—has indeed been lost.
None the less, the Union does mean quite a lot to those of us who are in politics, because we are fighting every day to maintain it: to retain our national identity and to retain the right, which we all have in this country, to say that we are British, or that we are of this United Kingdom. We may be Scottish, Northern Irish, Welsh or English, but we are also British, and all else is secondary to that.
I sympathise with those in Northern Ireland who were alarmed to hear the British Government claim in court that the Northern Ireland protocol “temporarily suspended” article VI of the Act of Union. Article VI created the internal market of the United Kingdom and was designed to give Ireland—now Northern Ireland—residents equal footing with regards to trade, and guarantee equal footing in all future treaties with foreign powers.
To those of us who hold most dear the notion that all in these islands are equal and that all are held in parity of esteem, that article is fundamental to who we are as a people. That is why it is not surprising that those who want to break this Union, to remove that right, to take away our identity, to remove the right to call ourselves British, from those of us who hold that right most dear are against that move today.
The SNP may couch its opposition to the Bill in legalistic language and it may claim, as it did in its amendment, which was not selected, that it was against this Bill because it was against international law—