Parliament and the people

Tomorrow Parliament has to decide whether it wishes to serve the people or defy them.

Parliament promised the electorate a referendum. It enacted one. It promised to enact the decision of the UK people. After much huffing and puffing it sent the Article 50 letter to leave the EU. After even more regrets and Parliamentary objections it passed the EU Withdrawal Act to confirm in UK law our departure on the 29 March 2019. If it wishes to serve the people it will now concentrate on making a success of our departure and do everything it can to use the new freedoms, money and controls we gain by exit.

Instead there are determined factions within Parliament who want to stop Brexit altogether, or who seek to delay or undermine it in the name of a having a so called  soft Brexit, partial Brexit, late Brexit or half in half out Brexit.  They have tried before to persuade the Parliament that we should stay in the Customs Union we voted to leave, and lost the votes. They have tried before to say we should stay in the single market or closely aligned to it though we voted to leave it, and again lost the votes.  Both Remain and Leave made crystal clear in the referendum leaving the EU meant leaving both single market and customs union. The UK government sent a leaflet to every household telling us just that. The EU has always said that. The EU says you cannot cherry pick, you can’t stay in the bits some like about the EU without accepting lots of rules, costs and laws you may not like.

The forces of Remain in the Commons now dare to say they are the defenders of Parliamentary democracy, by wanting further debate and more votes. The irony is crushing, as they only want more debates and more votes to stop us regaining control of our laws, our borders and and our money. They refuse to accept that their view has been given more than three years of air time in the referendum and in the endless repetitious debates they have required us to hold. It dominates the airwaves of the conventional media, where the Just Leave cause is given little time, always interrupted, and always bookended by “experts”  saying we are wrong. A group of Remain MPs who spent our years in the EU telling us no one was interested in details of EU policy and did their best to stop Parliament talking about it now want to talk about nothing  else. MPs who told us the EU had no significant powers over us now tell us what the EU does is wide ranging and crucial.

The public think it is time Parliament got on with it. The majority do not want Parliament to reverse its Brexit legislation and keep us in. The public have spoken. Parliament promised. Parliament must now let us leave. To do otherwise is to go to war with the people.