London: - Voicing their anguish over a
painful choice, many of the British MPs voting to start the Brexit process said
they were bowing to the referendum vote to leave the EU but feared history will
judge them harshly. More than two-thirds of members of the House of Commons
opposed Brexit, and in the weeks after last June's shock referendum vote, many
people outside parliament hoped that MPs could stop it happening.
But pro-Europeans in Prime Minister Theresa
May's own Conservative party and among the Labour opposition were gradually
forced to accept defeat and have said they will vote against deeply-held
beliefs. Their dilemma was laid bare in two days of debate this week on a bill
empowering May to start the process, as MP after MP stood up to explain why
they would back her despite their fears for the future.
"I lost the case. I made it with
passion, I sacrificed my position in government for it," said former
Conservative finance minister George Osborne, one of the strongest campaigners
against Brexit. "In the end we have to now accept that in a democracy the
majority has spoken."
Fellow MP Anna Soubry, who like Osborne has
warned of the risks of leaving Europe's single market, said it was a
"great folly" but agreed to back the bill. "How on earth did we
ever come to put to the people an alternative that we then said would make them
worse off and less safe and would weaken our nation?" she said.
"History will not be kind to this
parliament."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ordered his MPs
to support the bill, in a preliminary vote on Wednesday, to reflect the fact
that two-thirds of them represent constituencies that voted to leave the EU. But
his spokesman Keir Starmer, one of a majority of Labour lawmakers who opposed
Brexit, struggled through his Commons speech endorsing the bill.
Heckled by Tory MPs opposite, he asked them
to be "courteous" in accepting the deep divisions in his
"fiercly internationalist" party over the policy. Former minister
Margaret Beckett said she too would fall into line, but "I fear that its
consequences, both for our economy and our society, are potentially
catastrophic".
Dozens of Labour lawmakers were expected to
rebel, however, including Ian Murray, Labour's only MP in Scotland, who said he
did so with a "heavy heart". "I will do so in the knowledge that
I can walk down the streets of Edinburgh South and look at my constituents in
the eye, and say to them I've done everything I possibly can to protect their
jobs, livelihoods and the future for their family," he said.
The MPs' turmoil was in stark contrast to the
jubilation of those who have spent years in the political backwaters for their
euroscepticism. "Tonight there will be an historic vote in this place, a
vote that I never thought I would see in my political lifetime,"
His colleague Jacob Rees-Mogg had earlier
hailed "that noble, brave, glorious decision the people made on that day
of legend and song, June 23". Conservative former minister Ken Clarke, a
committed Europhile, poured scorn on pro-Brexit campaigners and accused them of
pursuing a fantasy "wonderland".
Sarah Olney, of the pro-European Liberal
Democrats, told parliament: "We are effectively being asked to jump out of
an aeroplane, without knowing whether or not we are securely attached to a
parachute". Angus Brendan MacNeil of Scottish National Party (SNP), which
opposes Brexit, warned: "People assume the House of Commons knows what
it's doing. It doesn't. "It's crossing its fingers and hoping for the
best."
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