Hansard

Before and since 2016, the Greens have made the case for Scotland’s place in the European Union. It is an imperfect institution, but it has been one of the most successful peace projects in human history.

It is one of the planet’s strongest voices for action on climate change. It is clearly more democratic than the byzantine system at Westminster and it has given us perhaps the most extraordinary political achievement of the past 100 years—freedom of movement, which is not only a benefit to our economy but a liberating principle for the people of Europe.

More fundamentally, Europe is our neighbourhood, our community and our family—we do not want to leave—so of course we were dismayed at the result of the referendum in 2016. However, what has happened since then has been worse than anyone could have imagined. The United Kingdom Government has treated Scotland abysmally, but its treatment of the whole of the UK has been shabby, too. It timed the 2016 referendum to take place just weeks after the Scottish Parliament election; it announced a snap UK election right in the middle of our local election campaigns; it refused to reach out, either across the Commons or to the nations, to seek consensus; it went to court to try and prevent MPs from having any say at all in revoking article 50; and it opposed the safety lock mechanism of the meaningful vote—losing on that issue by just four votes.

Every offer of political compromise has been utterly rejected. We had the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill, which—other than in one small aspect, which could easily have been corrected—was competent when passed. The UK Government did not like what we were doing with devolved legislation, so it first initiated a court case, then passed UK legislation that retrospectively limited the powers of this Parliament without our consent and prevented the bill from becoming law. The consequence is that, whatever legislation we now pass in devolved areas, we know that the UK Government is able and willing to retrospectively cut our powers to stop devolved laws coming into force when it does not like what we are doing.

The Conservatives’ amendment, in the name of Adam Tomkins, tells us that the 2016 result “should be respected”. Should we respect the leave campaign’s criminality? Should we respect the racism of so many prominent leave campaigners? Should we respect their refusal even to engage with the threat to peace in Ireland? Should we respect the numbers on the big red bus? I respect many individual people who voted leave and I respect their anger at the way in which the political status quo has failed them, but that failure lies at the door of successive UK Governments, not the European Union. It is the UK Government that has not respected the result of that referendum. To respect that result would be to respect that a 52:48 result is a knife-edge result that requires an effort to compromise and build a consensus. The UK Government did not do that. To respect the result would be to respect the different votes of the constituent parts of the UK—that famous “partnership of equals”. The UK Government did not do that; it did not respect the result—it was given an inch and took so much more than a mile.

Mr Tomkins’s amendment tells us that the result should be “delivered”. That boils down to the absurd simplicity of saying “get on with it” or “just leave”. We are way past that general argument. We are not interested in chasing unicorns any longer. Only a specific, coherent and achievable path forward can be taken seriously.

Mr Tomkins’s amendment also tells us that the best option is to leave “with a withdrawal agreement”, even though that agreement has been resoundingly defeated twice.

In the media today, the Conservatives are calling this debate “self-indulgent”. Apparently, creating this mess purely to address the Conservative Party’s internal ideological divide is not self-indulgent; prolonging the mess by refusing to reach out and seek consensus for staying inside the single market is not self-indulgent; and throwing a £1 billion bung to the misogynistic, homophobic, climate-change-denying, sectarian marchers of the Democratic Unionist Party in order to keep its own hopeless Prime Minister in office is not self-indulgent. However, apparently, anyone who tries to stop the chaos and end the crisis that the Tory party has forced on the country is being self-indulgent.

We are asked to accept that Adam Tomkins and so many other Tory politicians who voted to remain, argued in favour of EU membership and agreed with Ruth Davidson in the wake of the 2016 result that we should stay inside the single market and keep freedom of movement are all now convinced that leaving the European Union will be wonderful and the best course that we could possibly take. There is, apparently, nothing self-indulgent about their throwing in their lot with the self-appointed bad boys of Brexit and going along with that hard-right coup. When I look at the words that the Conservative Party is using today—“respected”, “delivered”, “agreement” and “self-indulgent”—I recognise them all, but I do not think that they mean what Adam Tomkins thinks they mean.

I turn to the Labour position. I recognise and welcome the movement that has been shown. It is, hopefully, becoming clear that Labour in the Scottish Parliament is increasingly willing to accept that Brexit is a hard-right project that we must not roll over and accept, regardless of what Barry Gardiner has to say.

I hope that Neil Findlay will be able to clarify some points when he speaks to his amendment. He prefers the term “public vote” to “People’s Vote”. I take it that he is still referring to a referendum with a remain option. Is the wording of his amendment intended to agree with our view that, if any withdrawal agreement is to be adopted by the UK Parliament, it must be put back to the people for them to decide whether it is what they want or whether they prefer the current deal—the best deal—of remaining inside the European Union with all our rights, protections and democratic representation and the ability to shape regulations in the public interest?

If that is the meaning of Mr Findlay’s amendment, we will support it to achieve the widest possible backing for the essence of the proposal that we have put forward. However, if that is not made clear, there is still a majority in this Parliament for the principle that the only ways forward are a referendum or revoking article 50.

On Saturday, I marched through London with more than a million others—people from a range of political parties and from no political party. Most of us never got anywhere near Parliament Square, so massive was the crowd that we were walking with. Also, nearly 6 million people—5.8 million at the latest count—have signed the petition asking to revoke article 50. Thanks to Andy Wightman, Ross Greer, Joanna Cherry, Catherine Stihler, Alyn Smith and David Martin who took the case to the European Court of Justice, we now know that that is an option that the UK can take, unilaterally, at any point before it leaves the EU.

As yet, we do not know what will be the result of the indicative vote process at Westminster tonight. We can be fairly sure that it will not result in a simple, sudden clarity—a sort of first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all outcome. There will still be choices to make; there will still be uncertainty; there will still be the huge threat of social, economic and political damage from any form of Brexit; and there will still be people trying to push the country over the cliff edge to deliberately make the crisis even worse.

Therefore, I ask this Parliament to make it clear, two hours before MPs cast their votes, that one of two things must happen. Whether a withdrawal agreement is adopted or not, we must have an extension that is long enough to put it back to the people. If that does not happen, we must cancel the crisis, revoke article 50 and move on.

I move,

That the Parliament commends the more than five million signatories to the UK Parliament petition to revoke Article 50, and believes that, unless the UK secures a sufficient extension to the Brexit process to organise and conduct a People’s Vote with an option to remain in the EU, the UK’s notification under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union should be revoked immediately.