As the second reading of the EU withdrawal bill neared its close, Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin tried to introduce a note of calm. Everyone on the Labour benches was getting much too worked up. The bill wasn’t some sort of crazed power grab by an insecure and incompetent government, it was just a dreary piece of necessary admin.
So dreary that the government couldn’t even be bothered to amend the bill to take away the powers it hadn’t intended to give itself. He stifled a yawn. Parliament should just chill out a bit. Live and let live. Yes, the bill wasn’t perfect but what in life was? Better a bad bill, than no bill at all. In any case, a vote against the bill would be a vote for chaos.
Labour’s Pat McFadden observed that it would be hard to come up with anything more chaotic than the current situation when no two cabinet ministers could agree on anything to do with Brexit. But this wasn’t enough to convince two of his colleagues. Frank Field was adamant anything that sought to improve the terms on which Britain left the EU would be seen as defying the will of the people.
“We need a means for how we review which legislation we keep and which we don’t,” he said. Though not enough for him to actually do anything about it. As far as Field was concerned, anything that sought to improve the terms on which Britain left the EU was a fundamental betrayal. The only true Brexit was a punishment Brexit. So, much as he might like the government to have rethought its position, he felt obliged to let their bad legislation go through on the nod. To err is human, to suffer is divine.
Caroline Flint was just as confused. “This bill is not hugely controversial,” she announced. In fact it was so uncontroversial that she was planning on abstaining in the vote. Her colleagues looked understandably surprised. Their idea of uncontroversial was a bill they could vote for or against with a clean conscience; not one where they couldn’t make up their minds what to do. The new look conviction politician is apparently one without the courage of her convictions.
It took Conservative Edward Leigh to inject some reason into the debate. Not a sentence that gets written too often as Leigh is not known for being one of the sharpest minds in the Commons. But cometh the hour, cometh the man. Or take it as a symptom of how poor many of the contributions had previously been. Your choice.
Leigh is an old school Brexiter, so if he thinks there is something seriously wrong with the country’s approach to its withdrawal from the EU then you know we’re in big trouble. He began by suggesting that Britain should try to be more magnanimous in its negotiations and be generous in its offer of a financial settlement. This was met with silence from the many on his own benches who would rather cut off other people’s hands than give the EU a penny.
He then moved on to the bill itself. It was bad law and in urgent need of amendment. Even he had to admit that the Conservative government’s very obvious attempts to limit the powers of parliaments through so-called Henry VIII clauses was a step too far. “ Henry VIII was a bastard, but he was my kind of my bastard,” he shrugged, explaining why he would still vote for it regardless. A Brexiter couldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, after all. There were limits to Leigh’s largesse.
This emboldened several other Tories to voice their concerns; mildly and with deep regret, of course – “Please don’t think for a second we care about this enough to consider voting against the government” – but the government frontbench could sense which way the wind was blowing. A few amendments would have to be made. Not many, but some. More as a symbolic gesture than to make a real difference. Parliament must be given the illusion of power. Even as it was to be denied it.
