After 44 years Parliament is back in business.

Early this morning the House of Commons voted.  Nothing remarkable about the House voting.  Nor that it was late at night.  They do that on occasion.  Not even the subject of the vote, the Bill that will transfer all existing EU legislation in the UK statute book.   What was remarkable was it was the first time Parliament has acted as the legislature of a sovereign country since we signed up to joining what was then the EEC.   One of the best speaches was from Caroline Flint (Lab, Don Valley). She voted Remain.  But she is a democrat.

There was lots of bluster.  Daniel Zeichner (Lab, Cambridge) declared: “We should not be withdrawing from the European Union at all”.  I could have understood if he had said “I don’t think we should be withdrawing from the European Union at all”.  But, no, in the vein of many Remainers who spoke, their view was to be more important than that of the democratic majority.   

What is quite amusing, though equally sad, is to hear people like Chris Bryant (Lab, Rhondda) lecture the nation from the green benches: “This Bill is utterly pernicious…fundamentally un-British…has at its heart a lie.” Oliver Letwin (Con, West Dorset) rose, cited provisions in the Bill which contradict Bryant’s claim that it will allow legislation by ministerial fiat, and invited him to withdraw that claim.   Bryant responded by saying, “I’m not going to give way to him again,” and ended: “Do not sell your birthright for a mess of pottage. Vote against the Bill.”   

So when the facts go against you, shut down the debate.  Perhaps one of the most unusual of speeches was made by Sir Ed Davey (Lib Dem, Kingston & Surbiton) who claimed “this Bill is undermining parliamentary sovereignty more than the EU ever did”, for it “doesn’t give control back to Parliament. It gives control back to ministers.”   Bit of an odd arguement that one given 20,000 laws were brought in to UK law without a single debate in parliament.

Perhaps it is not surprising for Sir Ed to have a bind spot given his party believes that the EU is virtually the Messiah.  And perhaps he is forgetting the thousands of thing in our laws in the UK which were never debated on the floor of the House he was speaking in.  These instruments of legislation had no parliamentary scrutiny.   

But now, as we did early this morning when we began the process of bringing all these instruments of legislation under the control of the people we elect, we are indeed restoring parliamentary democracy.  

That the Liberal Democrats and others don’t see this and would rather we continued to have our laws made elsewhere and automatically imposed on us, makes you wonder why they bother adding Democrats to their name.   

And here is the rub.  What the Lib Dems and others seem to miss, although the Bill last night passed this hurdle by the relatively comfortable margin of 326 votes to 290, a hard process of legislative scrutiny lies ahead.  Parliament is restored.   

It is now doing exactly what it is supposed to do, and couldn’t do in the years we were enslaved by the European Court of Justice, act as the legislature of a sovereign country.