I have indeed said that none of us gained a mandate from the election. That is precisely the position in which we all find ourselves. We should therefore be modest and moderate in the way in which we attempt to interpret the confused and disengaged opinion of the British public, with which we now struggle.
In the Statement the Prime Minister has just given in the Commons, which is about to be repeated in this House, I was very struck by the warmth it attaches to our co-operation with our European partners, the solidarity we gain from other members of the European Union with whom we have “shared values and interests”, and the assumption that we need to continue to co-operate with them on major issues from resisting President Trump’s tariffs and Russian threats to a range of other areas from which we will absent ourselves in March 2019 under the current arrangement. Therefore, as these negotiations move on, we need to continue this process of discovering where our interests lie, how we will continue to co-operate with our neighbours and partners if and when we leave, and not to leave until we are sure that we have a worthwhile alternative arrangement agreed.
We know why this measure is in the Bill: the hardliners in the Conservative Party and the Government have reached a point where they are prepared to accept all sorts of concessions that the Prime Minister may make to the European Union so long as we leave. The most important thing for them is that we leave what they consider to be the hated domination of the European Union. They have no thought of shared values and interests because they want to be out of the European Union. They want to be out even if we have a transition period of a further 21 months in which we continue to accept and follow all the rules and regulations of the European Union without being present around the table.
It is absolutely against the national interest for us to leave the table until the end of the transition period or to do so until we know—and Parliament has agreed—what our future relationship with the European Union will be in a range of economic, foreign policy, defence and internal security areas. We must not be stuck, as other Members said, because we have a fudge in October and a general political agreement without much content, and, following the Foreign Secretary saying to us, “You’re all too pessimistic about this. Let’s just be optimistic”, we then jump in, splash, and hope that the water is deep enough.