My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, is well known for providing some very interesting ideas. We thank him for many of his suggestions. I am glad that he comes to the same conclusion as I think most Members of this House will do in this debate, have done in previous debates on this subject and will continue to do in the future.
Fortunately and agreeably for this House, it is only a minority of Members who do not seem to understand the functioning of the EU. Such people therefore produce a lot of criticism which is unfounded and inaccurate. Let us take once again the huge concept of sovereignty and what it really means. At the moment, the EU is a collection of 28 genuinely sovereign countries. All of them have their own intrinsic sovereignty, none of which has been reduced by membership of the EU, except by decisions of those sovereign countries working through integrated institutions and treaties decided by unanimity to limit some of their separateness in sovereignty to increase the general strength of the whole Community. The general sovereignty of the whole Community and the Union grows as a result of those decisions gradually and step by step. Treaties are freely entered into without any major aggro or difficulty. There are always of lots of discussions and arguments about detail, but some of those matters of detail do not have to be decided by unanimity. As we know, they can then be subject to the subsidiarity effect of majority voting and the directives that allow a sovereign member state to produce its own legislation on a particular agreed policy.
I cannot understand what the anxiety is. A colleague such as the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, is an example of someone who misunderstands all that and is fearful of a lack of sovereignty. There is no such lack; it is a gradual, total increase all the time of both the national sovereignty of the more important member states as a result of their collective membership of the Union and the Union’s collective sovereignty, which grows at the same time. Why do the other 27 never express any anxiety about this concept of sovereignty? It is very logical, based on common sense and unique in the world, which is why it is magic to many people. It is a pity that people here—not many, but some—wish to live in a past of old-fashioned, pretend sovereignty or pictorial sovereignty, which has no substance in the modern world. The modern world is interconnected and international, with all people of all kinds working together. Foreigners are in different countries in ever greater numbers. The more there are, the better and more exciting it is. As Ken Clarke famously said, we need more foreigners because they make British society more exciting. That is a perfectly acceptable remark. I hope that colleagues who do not have such anxieties about sovereignty might explain it better to those still worried about it.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for his remarks. He is not here at the moment, but his speech mirrored amazingly the remarks that he made eight months ago, in July last year, when he said that we are heading for crashing out unless things are taken into control and brought into proper order.
I was in the Commons for 27 years and, after an interval of seven years outside Parliament, have been in the Lords for more than 14 years. I can honestly say
that I have never before had the sad misfortune of witnessing the outrageous behaviour of a Prime Minister in exceeding all norms of civilised conduct and intelligent restraint in the ruthless pursuit of the narrowest part of their own party’s interests. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but it is true. I have never experienced it before over all those years of all the Prime Ministers that we have had of whatever party.
Of course, some people would say, maybe fairly, that Mrs May was entitled to pursue “Brexit means Brexit” immediately after taking over from David Cameron following his colossal mistakes, in that period after what is now viewed by many as an imperfect referendum process—that was not the public’s fault; it was that the construction of the referendum exercise was totally flawed and mistaken. She had the right to do that only to the fateful and faithful 8 June 2017 election result. At that stage we need to remind ourselves that she completely and utterly lost the mandate of “Brexit means Brexit”. Already people in the country were experiencing second thoughts anyway. Instead Mrs May, amazingly and unbelievably, launched an outrageous and squalid deal with the most unpopular party in the Commons, the right-wing extremists of the Ulster unionist clique in the DUP, to create an artificial majority. In civilised countries with a written constitution, that would mostly have been ruled out of order by the relevant constitutional court or council of state anyway; but not in this country, because we have bandit politics because of no written constitution, as we know. The Government created an artificial majority with right-wing extremists from Northern Ireland who, incidentally, oppose all modern human and civil rights for modern women; and there was a huge £1 billion bribe as well. As one famous magazine, the New Statesman, said on 28 January:
“Mrs May could have used this crisis as an opportunity. Having secured no mandate for her Brexit policy, she could have reached out to parliament and sought to forge a cross-party consensus with all the opposition parties. Instead, she bought the support of the reactionary DUP and indulged her party’s Europhobes”.
Only after a historic defeat and at this perilously late hour has Mrs May now finally at least pledged to pursue a cross-party approach, which now looks totally insincere and ungenuine. It is now already too late for her to do this.
What Parliament must do now is to secure an extension of time beyond 29 March. Kenneth Clarke, when it was all first promulgated, always thought it was a fundamental mistake to have the date put in at that stage and objected to it, and quite rightly so. Then there was the famous amendment by Dominic Grieve. We now need to work for a people’s vote to sort out this catastrophic shambles, because the whole world is unfortunately and tragically laughing at Britain.
Staying in the EU would end the historical mistakes and our condescension over Ireland—I thank the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, for his contribution in this respect today. That has been one of our tragedies in this country. I am glad that the condescension in people’s voices towards Irish people when they addressed them and so on has now at long last disappeared—from most people, anyway. Commitment to the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland must unshakeably
be maintained, because it is a solemn and sacred promise and there would be mayhem and trouble if it were not.
On all the intelligent analyses and examinations of recent figures, the various polls now show a huge change in public opinion, especially among the large number of younger voters—not just the ones who still support the Labour Party, despite Jeremy Corbyn’s mistakes, but others as well, including our British citizens living in other EU countries who have been there for more than 15 years and were arbitrarily denied the vote in the last referendum; that is a shameful fact. If the public accepted the final verdict of Parliament in this mayhem and confusion, that would be a marvellous result from the point of view of restoring the authority and sovereignty—yes, sovereignty—of the British Parliament, mainly, of course, expressed in the House of Commons. But if that is not enough because of the terrible, tearing crisis that has been caused in this country to people’s confidence in politicians and the political class, we need to get on to the concept of a people’s vote.
Finally, I quote Dominic Grieve, who has been very brave in all this in the House of Commons. Writing in the Evening Standard on Monday, he said:
“The next weeks are likely to be decisive in this respect”—
the respect that I have been discussing. He continued:
“The opportunity exists for the House of Commons to rise to this crisis and show the common sense that could get us out of difficulty. But that means putting aside the shallow considerations of party political advantage and having the courage to be honest with others as to what is happening. Insisting that all will somehow be well if Brexit goes through now, rather than insisting on a pause and a measured reconsideration, is an abdication of our responsibility”.
If the MPs can rise to the occasion that Dominic Grieve wants to see, that will be, in our history, the second of our finest hours.
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