Shropshire Star

Chris Gill: Former Ludlow MPs mission over 'disastrous' Brexit deal

CHRISTOPHER GILL is a former Tory MP for Ludlow who later moved to UKIP. Today he explains his fury at the current Brexit debate

Published

On Tuesday I was a man on a mission.

Taking advantage of the privilege granted to former Members of Parliament I positioned myself in the East gallery of the chamber of the House of Commons, directly opposite the despatch box from which the Prime Minister would make the opening speech in the scheduled five day debate on the ‘EU Withdrawal Agreement’ (WA) that she had brought back from that temple of freedom and democracy in Brussels.

Albeit totally against the rules, my plan was to stand up and, looking the Prime Minister straight in the eye, accuse her of having defied the freely expressed will of the people by failing to deliver a proper Brexit and of having thereby also betrayed the peoples’ trust in the democratic process.

Had I not been hauled down by a burly doorkeeper I would have gone on to say that Theresa May should GO.....and GO QUICKLY.

I was hell-bent on making my protest because my democratically expressed opinion – an opinion shared by the 17.4 million other people who, on June 23 2016, voted to Leave the sclerotic and totalitarian European Union – was being cast aside in favour of Mrs May’s abject capitulation to the EU, the so-called WA.

When I went to the House at midday the situation, in simple terms, was that if her WA was defeated in the vote next Tuesday we would have then been on course to leave the EU on March 29 2019 with no strings attached – .and saving our country a King’s ransom (£39 Billions) into the bargain.

Uncharted waters

Defeat of the WA would have meant that, with one bound, we would at last have been on track to resume our former status as a free, independent and democratic nation. But the arch-Remainers on the Conservative benches, all 25 of them, had other plans.

Notwithstanding that the Conservative Party manifesto, on which they had all stood at the superfluous General Election last year, pledged a Conservative government to implement the decision of the peoples’ vote in the 2016 Referendum, they wanted and connived at something entirely contrary.

As a result of the fiendishly clever amendment moved by former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield MP) and whole-heartedly supported by dyed in the wool europhile Father of the House, Ken Clarke (Rushcliffe MP), we’re into uncharted waters.

Theresa May’s WA is not amendable, but now, supposing it is voted down on Tuesday (which appears to be almost a racing certainty ) whatever motion she might bring back to the House in its place will be subject to whatever amendment her wrecker colleagues in the House of Commons choose to make.

All very democratic you might think, until you realise that what this is all about is a last-ditch attempt to overturn the Referendum decision and to prevent us ever leaving the benighted EU. Heads the Remainers win, tails the Leavers lose!

Rather than face the prospect of something infinitely worse, tabled by MP Remainers in the event that the PM loses the vote on Tuesday, MP Leavers will now be under inordinate pressure to bury their principles, grit their teeth, and vote for the appalling WA, despite knowing full-well that such action will effectively negate the majority Referendum decision.

This all begs the question as to where we Leavers go from here.

My one-man protest in the House on Tuesday was occasioned by sheer frustration that having fought this EU battle - responsibly utilising the democratic means at my disposal, both as a voter and from 1987 to 2001, as a Member of Parliament – and having eventually won the battle of hearts and minds it now appears that I and others like me might, in reality, have lost.

The Prime Minister takes the view that to accommodate the views of both the Remainers and the Leavers it is her duty to find a compromise to settle the issue.

NO, Prime Minister, that is not how our constitution works.

In British ‘first past the post’ elections, the winner takes all.

By your compromises you are opening the door ever wider to a Corbyn administration and if you believe that he is going to compromise to accommodate the views of defeated conservatives then you really do need to think again.

You’ve lost the plot, you’ve lost control of your party and, unforgivably, you are on the cusp of selling us out to the EU.

Nobody doubts your capacity for hard work, your exceptional stamina and your sheer determination but, for the sake of our great nation, please do as I tried to tell you on Tuesday.

Just go – and make way for someone who will deliver what the people voted for.