Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:47 pm on 27 March 2019.
Nicholas Boles
Conservative, Grantham and Stamford
3:47,
27 March 2019
I join my hon. Friend Stephen Kinnock in proposing motion (D). I, too, want to make the case for compromise, not as something cowardly but as something courageous. In a divided country and a divided Parliament, finding and sustaining a compromise that most people can support is a noble endeavour. After years of paralysing conflict, we have a moral duty to open our minds this afternoon and reach for a compromise that will allow us to put the interminable Brexit row behind us.
The great strength of the common market 2.0 proposal, relative to all other Brexit compromises, is that it offers something important and valuable to everyone and every party in this House. For Labour Members, it offers the strong position in the single market that, as Frances O’Grady has affirmed, is vital for workers’ rights. For SNP Members, common market 2.0 preserves the principle of free movement of labour, which they tell me is essential to Scotland’s future economic prosperity and social cohesion. For those in other parts of the UK, worried about the possibility of another massive influx of European migrants such as the one we experienced after Poland and Hungary joined the EU in 2004, it offers an emergency brake, which could be deployed as a temporary safeguard in the regions affected.
For my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches, common market 2.0 offers the prospect of being able to benefit from the free trade agreements struck by the European Free Trade Association, or to do our own trade deals once alternative arrangements to maintain no hard border on the island of Ireland have been agreed with the EU.