Take Back Control.
They are simple words.
But together they conjured up a very real idea that someone else was telling the UK what we could or could not do.
This notion of a dwindling supremacy of Parliament was a huge emotive reason for why so many people voted to leave the European Union and it is why the sidelining of Parliament by Conservative Prime Ministers is so perverse.
I am clear that the best way to stop a no-deal Brexit is to agree a deal.
This apparently remains the objective of the PM.
However, he will also know that to ratify any deal his Government negotiates with the EU, he’ll need the support of the very MPs he has just relegated to little more than interested observers.
Stoke-on-Trent voted to Leave the EU.
My constituents, by a majority of two to one, were clear that they saw the future of the UK outside the EU.
In all the letters and emails that I have received from my constituents over the past two-and-a-half years, not a single one has asked for Parliament to be silenced.
My constituents voted to empower the UK Parliament to, as they were told, “take back control”.
Closing the doors on our Parliament does the exact opposite.
