Yesterday the Opposition parties and 17 Remain Conservatives voted for amendments to legislation to try to ensure Parliament has to meet in September and October to give them more time to try to delay or cancel Brexit. They call this taking back control and advocating Parliamentary democracy! It is of course the opposite. Labour and Conservative MPs were elected in 2017 on a manifesto for each party that promised to implement Brexit. Parliament voted by a large majority to send the Article 50 Notification of our exit, which means in European law we will leave on 31 October. I remember explaining to the Commons then that was the decision point, the moment Parliament legislated to leave. Now they wish to tear up their promises and refuse to take back control of our laws, our money and our borders despite the referendum.
I do not think even this discredited Parliament full of Labour MPs and a few Conservatives who have ratted on their promise to implement the decision of the people will find a way and a majority to revoke our exit letter. Short of doing that we will leave on 31 October, as promised by the likely next Prime Minister. We are due to leave according to European law. The UK Parliament cannot overturn European law, and only the PM can ask for a delay and seek agreement to changes to EU law to delay our official exit date.
The people made clear in the European election what they thought of the decision of the two major parties to delay our exit. They rejected both. They made it even clearer what they thought of Mrs May’s Withdrawal Treaty, which got less than 9% support from the electorate in that election. The Conservative government must press on with preparations for our departure in October. Only such an exit can save this Parliament from driving itself even further from the electors it is meant to serve, and only such an exit can provide a platform for the two main parties to start to rebuild the trust of voters which has been undermined by the delay to Brexit.
The desperate idea this morning that a Remain majority should ask the Queen to override the PM taking us out is absurd.
Meanwhile Project Fear is in an extreme stage. Yesterday the OBR gave us a very pessimistic “scenario” – not a forecast – for a so called No Deal exit. If we just leave and have a Brexit bonus budget as outlined here we will grow faster next year as a result. All the time we stay in the EU as today with a combined monetary and fiscal squeeze we will grow slowly at best against a difficult world background for trade and manufacturing activity. The right fiscal boost, facilitated by saving our budget contributions to the EU, coupled with a more positive money policy could deliver considerably better growth than in the Euro area for us next year. The UK economy has proved very resilient considering the anti growth and anti enterprise policies being pursued.
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