A former senior Tory MP has perfectly explained why Britain faces decades of Brexit infighting despite Boris Johnson’s deal promising an end to them.
Dominic Grieve, who lost his seat in the 2019 election after campaigning as an independent, said the prospect of Britain joining the EU in the future was still possible.
Asked if the Tory Party would one day campaign to rejoin, Grieve said: “Look at what happened to the Conservative Party in the 1950s and 1960s when a majority went in favour of joining the then EEC (European Economic Community).
“The idea that the treaty we’re about to get is the end of this is simply incorrect.
“Everything in the world is dynamic. It doesn’t stop. The EU is going to develop, the United Kingdom is going to develop in various directions – how exactly, we can’t predict.
“But the geography isn’t going to change. The geography is that we are a European nation. We might be an offshore island but we are part of a European cultural, political, and economic space and that is going to continue.”
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The EEC is the formal name given the EU’s economic union created under the Treaty of Rome in 1957.
Taking aim at suggestions Brexit was ‘over’, Grieve added: “As of the idea that we must now put Brexit behind us, I’m only too happy to in one sense but the issue which underlies Brexit is not going away.
“The issue is: where does our prosperity lie and our national interest, and who do we need to cooperate with most closely to give the best wellbeing to our citizens in a difficult and increasingly dangerous world?
“At the moment, I haven’t listened to one single, coherent argument as to how the new relationships, which the present prime minister says he’s going to develop, are going to compensate for the damage that we have done to the old ones.”
Britain will leave the EU single market and customs union on December 31, whether or not in clinches a trade deal.
Grieve had the Conservative whip removed in September 2019 after he and 21 other Tory MPs voted against the government on Brexit.
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