THE people of Scotland now “realise they were lied to during” the independence referendum, an SNP MP told the House of Commons yesterday. Speaking during the final day of debate on Theresa May’s Brexit deal, Joanna Cherry demanded a rerun of referendums on both the UK’s membership of the EU and Scotland’s membership of the UK.
“The majority of Scots now realise they were lied to during the 2014 independence referendum,” the Edinburgh South West MP said. “Those lies were that Scotland was an equal partner, and that the only way to guarantee to stay in the EU was to vote to stay in the UK.
“The results of referendums won on the back of lies cannot stand. That’s why I’m voting down this deal. I want a second EU referendum and there should also be a second Scottish independence referendum.”
Opening the debate, the Tory Attorney General Geoffrey Cox launched a stinging attack on his colleagues who support a no-deal Brexit.
“What are you playing at?” he said. “What are you doing? You are not children in the playground, you are legislators. This is your job. We are playing with people’s lives.”
Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal was, he said, like an airlock. “If you are moving from one pressurised atmosphere or environment to another, it is necessary to have an airlock. This withdrawal agreement is the first key that will unlock the airlock and take us into the next stage, where the second key will be the permanent relationship treaty.”
Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, rubbished his colleague’s speech: “We had the analogy of the airlock, in which we were assured that if we placed ourselves for a period of time in an uncomfortable position, we would find that the door opened to the fields of ambrosia beyond.
“I am afraid that my own view is that we will either choke to death in the airlock as a nation or, when the door finally opens, find the landscape little to our liking.”
In his speech, the SNP’s Angus MacNeil accused May of “playing the Gloria Gaynor card, kicking it all down the road and hoping she will survive”. "She is running out of road now and she knows she is running out of road,” he added.
Scottish Labour’s Paul Sweeney lamented that “economic alienation caused by a crisis of neo-liberalism” had driven the UK towards Brexit.
Scottish Tory MP Kirstene Hair, who backed the Prime Minister’s deal, said the SNP were determined to “force a no-deal situation in the hope that will accelerate their case for independence”.
Speaker John Bercow, above, made life difficult for Theresa May when he refused to pick an amendment to the Brexit deal that could have made the Prime Minister’s defeat a little less crushing.
Downing Street had hoped MPs would get to vote on a change to the final motion proposed by Tory backbencher Andrew Murrison which would have backed a hard deadline of 2021 for the Irish backstop. Although it would not have changed the binding legal text of the treaty which has been signed off by the 27 remaining members of the EU, the government believed it could let Brussels know how much the backstop was hated.
Tory chiefs hoped a more hardline final motion, would make it more palatable for their Brexit backing rebels. But Bercow said no. Last week he infuriated Downing Street when he overturned Commons tradition and allowed MPs to amend a motion the government thought unamendable.
Bercow selected four amendments for MPs, but three of them were unexpectedly pulled at the last minute by the MPs and parties who tabled them. The only amendment to be voted on was from veteran Tory backbencher John Baron.
He wanted the UK to have the unilateral right to terminate the backstop without the say-so of the EU. It was defeated 600 votes to 24.
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