Kate Hoey: If Jeremy were true to his Brexit instinct, we could be 10 points ahead in the polls

Below is the full text of Kate Hoey’s speech to a Leave Means Leave rally on Friday 14th December.

It is wonderful to be on a cross-party platform tonight in London. The capital city of our great country: the HQ of the organisers of those in big business, the media ex-Prime Ministers doing everything they can to thwart the view of the British people made in a referendum and supported by an overwhelming vote in parliament. I see Tony Blair is continuing to make that case for a second referendum.

This was a referendum where many who had given up on politics, or who had never voted because they felt politicians never listened, came out and voted. They thought that if they voted leave and Leave won then something specific would change and their vote would have mattered at last.

They were promised / warned repeatedly that the result would be enacted. It was, according to David Cameron, to be a ‘once in a lifetime vote’. A lifetime span of people, not that of a mole.

So despite the dire warnings, the accusations of being racist or stupid, 17.4 million people defied the establishment and voted to leave. I was so proud that outside London 70% of constituencies that voted Leave had a Labour MP.

Two days after the referendum, my 95-year-old mother, a longtime critic of the EU, said to me: “Catharine – you know dear, they will never let us leave”. I said: No Mum, we live in a democracy: parliament could never go against the decision. How wrong I was.

Let us be clear, the majority of MPs currently in parliament voted to remain. It is a remain parliament and many of them have spent their time conspiring to do everything possible to stop us leaving. The lawyers in the Commons have had a field day backed up by a Speaker who himself had a ‘Bollox to Brexit’ on his car. Yet for years parliament has voted through one treaty after another taking away more and more of our sovereignty without ever giving any say to the people.

I am very clear and the public should be very clear: no amendment in parliament can override the legal position. No parliamentary vote can be allowed to stop us leaving. We handed the decision to the people. The people have decided.

This is a very dangerous time for democracy. The public are getting tired of politicians using manifestos to get elected and then abandoned. Just look at the manifesto of both Conservative and Labour last year: neither party has kept to their commitments on the EU. Dissatisfaction and anger is on the rise across most other EU countries.

I and my other Labour colleagues in Labour Leave represent the great Labour tradition of patriotism, true internationalism and faith in the common sense of the British people.

My first election in 1983 was on a manifesto that a Labour government would leave the European Economic Community. The tradition of Attlee, Benn, Gaitskill. Peter Shore and of course, 0n the 100th anniversary of women voting for the first time getting the vote, the charismatic Barbara Castle. She made clear back in 1971 in some great speeches in parliament just what joining the common market would lead to, and she was right.

You know something. If only Labour would revive that spirit today. If Jeremy was allowed to be true to his instinct and revert to the traditional anti-EU view, we could be 10 points ahead in the polls.

I don’t believe that the Prime Minister ever really understood what motivated that huge Leave vote. Yes, she said Brexit means Brexit, but her idea of Brexit is not taking back sovereignty. Her withdrawal deal would still give control to the European Court of Justice. She has spent more than two years cosying up to the EU, asking them for a half-baked deal that keeps us as close to their institutions as possible. She plays tough with our parliament, disgracefully pulling the vote at the last minute whilst at the same time continually pushing the mantra that the EU will give us more.

The EU will never willingly give us anything. They don’t want us to be competitive and successful. They don’t want us to have trading deals with those Commonwealth countries who lead the world in economic development like India, Singapore, Malaysia – all waiting to work with us.

But they don’t want us to have power to make our own rules and laws in our own country. They have ruthlessly exploited the weakness of our negotiators who, as the eminent Martin Howe QC has said, have been as flexible as a limp lettuce. It makes my blood boil when I see how our Prime Minister, no matter how much I disagree with her, is being treated in Brussels. It is humiliating for our great country and it just cannot go on.

This withdrawal deal is a complete sell-out and must be defeated. We didn’t vote for a deal, we voted to Leave. Why do our politicians from across parliament not have more confidence in our countries ability to thrive and prosper outside the EU? There is a deliberate campaign to make a managed exit on World Trade terms seem unthinkable.

Journalists on some of our supposedly great political programmes do everything to stop any explanation of what this would mean. Catastrophic is the word they all use. Well I tell you what catastrophic is: leaving us locked into the EU but without a voice – being half in, half out, a vassal state still paying vast sums of money each year until they finally deign to give us a deal.

Just think how different it would have been if the government was led by a Prime Minister who believed in Brexit. How can we ever have agreed to sign a legally binding agreement giving away £39bn in advance of a single promise on trade? How could any UK Prime Minister agree a deal that separates out Northern Ireland? Just another of the Prime Ministers broken promises of no border down the Irish Sea.

Now Sammy Wilson will go into this in a lot more detail, but as someone who grew up in Northern Ireland and proud to be pro-Union, I feel very strongly. We didn’t spend 3o years stopping IRA terrorists killing soldiers, police and civilians in order to get a United Ireland to allow a few jumped up EU bureaucrats and a near complicit Prime Minister trying to do the same. Especially as it would not be in the economic interests of Northern Ireland, which depends so much on trade to and from Great Britain.

Why is a British Prime Minister dancing to the Irish government’s tune? There is no need for a hard border and there is no need for a backstop. The Chancellor wants to flush out the “extremists”, so here we have a member of the government calling the majority of the country extremists. Well, if those of us wanting to get our sovereignty back, our own trade deals, having no EU court overruling us, are extremists, then I am very, very, very proud to be called an extremist. 

I do not fear another referendum. I genuinely think the vote to leave would be bigger than before. But I fear the precedent it would set. And why should we have another? The people have already spoken. Now their orders must be carried out. Let us keep the faith. We are on the right side of history. We need to keep united, keep strong and we will win.