Brexit

The news that Labour Brexiteers Kate Hoey and Frank Field are both facing deselection threats for rebelling on a crunch Brexit vote has been met with notable silence from many Labour moderates. After the pair voted with the Tories on a crucial customs amendment which the government won by just five votes, they have both lost 'confidence' votes in their local parties. The no-confidence vote does not mean any imminent action but constituency party members could now seek a trigger ballot with the potential to deselect the sitting MP. Hoey and Field's sin isn't just that they broke with official Labour Brexit policy – there are plenty of Corbynistas who can be classed as eurosceptic.

Here is quite a good trick question. Which current Member of Parliament has voted most often against pro-EU measures? I have not done the count, but I suppose it would be natural to guess Bill Cash, who entered Parliament in 1984. In fact, it is much more likely to be Jeremy Corbyn who came into the House in 1983 and has defied his party more often on the subject than has Sir William. It is fascinating how Mr Corbyn’s tenacious Bennite Euroscepticism has been glossed over by the media. The most likely candidate, however, must be Dennis Skinner, who entered Parliament in 1970 and must be the last person still sitting there to have voted against entry in the first place.

Matthew Parris argues that the notice period for leaving the EU should be extended beyond March 2019 by agreement, as is legally possible. Is that not just prolonging the agony? One suspects that what Parris hopes is not that extending the negotiating period will produce better exit terms for Britain, but that it will prevent Brexit from happening at all. As a Remain voter in 2016, it took me 24 hours to come to terms with the fact that our side lost. Parris and co are still sulking after more than 24 months. If called on to vote in an entirely inappropriate second referendum, I would vote Brexit to preserve some semblance of democracy in this country.

Most of Westminster has suffered a psychological and operational implosion because of the referendum. Many MPs, hacks and charlatan-pundits on both sides have responded to the result by retreating to psychologically appealing parallel worlds rather than face reality. A subset of the ERG, for example, welcomed the December agreement on the Irish backstop that actually spelled doom for their central ideas about how the negotiations were being conducted. This is the same group now ranting about Chequers — which was programmed by the December agreement, as are the imminent further surrenders in the autumn on Free Movement and everything else!