At 7pm on Wednesday 13 December 2017 MPs from across the political spectrum joined together to back Parliamentary sovereignty by backing Amendment 7 to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, which seeks to ensure that Parliament has a meaningful vote on any final Brexit deal. In the vote MPs voted by 309 to 305 to support the amendment.
This vote was a significant victory for democracy, enabling Parliament to properly scrutinize and Brexit deal, and giving it a veto – which the European Parliament and most other EU Member State Parliaments already have – over any deal it judges to not be in the national interest. Amendment 7 therefore makes an economically, politically and socially damaging hard Brexit a lot less likely.
We would like to thank all our supporters – and the many thousands of pro-EU campaigners across the UK – who have emailed, phoned, wrote to and met with their MP over the past few weeks to ask them to support Amendment 7. This victory shows what we can achieve when diverse campaigning organizations, national and local, and individual citizens work together to achieve a common aim.
We are particularly pleased to see that four of the seven Cambridgeshire MPs supported the amendment, they are Daniel Zeichner MP (Cambridge), Heidi Allen MP (South Cambridgeshire), Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon), and Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough). We thank them all for this, but especially Heidi Allen and Jonathan Djanogly who put the best interests of their country and constituents ahead of party politics.
This is not the end, far from it. Next week Parliament is scheduled to vote on a government supported amendment that would set the date the UK leaves the EU as 29 March 2019. This amendment is dangerous as it risks a damaging disorderly Brexit if a deal with the EU isn’t reached by then, preventing any extension of the Article 50 period and raising the prospect that the UK could crash out of the EU before Parliament has the opportunity to vote on a deal.It also makes the job of the UK’s negotiators even more difficult than it already is, by reducing their flexibility. As such it is a classic example of how not to negotiate.
We know that many of the Conservative MPs who backed Amendment 7 are likely to also block the exit date amendment, and after yesterday’s vote others may be encouraged to join them. We urge our supporters to write again to their MP and ask them to vote to prevent the self-imposed deadline of 29 March 2019 being added to the EU Withdrawal Bill.
Help us keep the pressure up! Join Cambridge Stays today (for just £5 a year)and make this the moment the tide turns against Brexit!
0 Comments