Today I am standing up for Brexit, I spent the weekend in a dark room with a hot towel on my head reading the 585-page draft EU Withdrawal Agreement, which is not even the agreement that we are going to end up with, it is just the terms on which we can negotiate a future agreement!
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It keeps us within a customs union indefinitely where we have no control over our trade deals and tariffs. This will prevent us from striking the new free trade agreements with the growing parts of the world we need to crack on with securing.
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It does not determine what coming out of the Single Market is going to be like. Our rules and regulations will still be administered from Brussels and the UK will only be "consulted" on any new rules and regulations.
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It does not determine the future status of UK citizens in Europe and EU citizens in the UK, despite there being previous announcements that this issue had been settled.
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It still gives huge powers to the European Court to continue determining our laws and regulations in this country, such that the European Court of Justice will have responsibility for ensuring that the UK implements EU rules - over which we will have no influence and will have no choice in having to implement.
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It does not even give us the power to end the backstop and come out of the customs union when we choose, instead it is only when the EU agrees and thinks it is the right time for them.
All this means that we could be signed up to the whole EU for many years to come without the power to unilaterally withdraw from the arrangements. This is not Brexit and that is why I cannot vote for this prospective deal and why I am standing up for Brexit and urging my colleagues to do the same.
I have also included below three helpful documents:
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Fact Not Friction, available at http://bit.ly/FactNotFriction (also attached below)
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Your Right to Know: The Case against Chequers and the Draft Withdrawal Agreement in plain English, available at http://bit.ly/ERGRightToKnow (also attached below)
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Martin Howe QC’s legal analysis of the Withdrawal agreement