Mrs May's proposal is worse than Remaining. It's Remaining, but with no voice.

Who said this?  “That means taking control of our own affairs, as those who voted in their millions to leave the European Union demanded we must. So we will take back control of our laws and bring an end to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in Britain. Leaving the European Union will mean that our laws will be made in Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. And those laws will be interpreted by judges not in Luxembourg but in courts across this country.”   

This passage in the Conservative Manifesto was drawn from a fuller passage in the Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech on 17 January 2017.   

Sounds clear.  Unambiguous.  No room for doubt, or manoeuvre.   But the Chequers agreement says totally the opposite.  According to Martin Howe, QC, “we will not have truly left the European Union if we are not in control of our own laws.”  And he should know, being one of the foremost lawyers of his generation when it come to EU law.  You can read Martin Howes report in full.  And, as he clearly points out, we won’t be in control of our laws if the ECJ has rule over us.  This is spelt out starkly in a paper he and his colleagues have written about the implications of what Mrs May has proposed in her Chequers dogs breakfast.  It’s a dogs breakfast because it is self-contradictory, and certainly contradicts the pledges given by Mrs May at the general election.  

My question is, what are democrats, of both the Leave and Remain camps who have accepted the democratic wishes of the people, supposed to do when we find the people elected on a manifesto, both Conservative and Labour, ignore it and do the exact opposite?    

Some more excitable nations would get out on the streets and try to bring down the government.  But us, no, we seem to accept that deception is part and parcel of how Mrs May and Olly Robbins are now ruling us.  And we must ask, what’s the point of Her Majesties Opposition if it connives with all of this?  Labour should be thoroughly ashamed of their behaviour thus far.

And to finish, who said this?  “O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!” Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish historical novelist, playwright, poet and historian.

He may have died in 1832, but his words couldn't be more contemporary.