There is an important sense in which Labour is delighted that part of the UK – Northern Ireland – effectively remains in the EU, subject to its jurisdiction, even while we remain unrepresented in its institutions.
In the first instance, it means that at least part of the UK is still in the EU and in that respect the Brexiteers failed in their mission to honour the 2016 referendum. Hilary Benn genuinely is, in some senses, Labour’s Secretary of State for the EU!
In the second instance, however, and much more importantly, it provides the basis for helping them achieve what they really want, namely undermining Brexit in the rest of the UK with a view to recreating the conditions wherein the pressures to rejoin will – they hope – become irresistible.
They can excuse this not on the basis of taking a step to rejoin the EU – which would lack the required subtlety – but as trying to prevent divergence between one part of the UK, Northern Ireland, and the other, GB.
This strategy is now plain for all to see in the Government’s proposed EU Reset.
The EU Commission proposal that the EU Council of Ministers commenced negotiations with the UK to develop the reset makes it clear that bringing the two parts of the UK back into legal alignment is part of its central justification.
Similarly, when the UK Government presented the reset to the British public, it again provided fixing the border as a key component of its rationale.
In truth, however, this process has been in place long before the reset.
Last year, for example, the EU imposed legislation on Northern Ireland, without any consultation with the people of Northern Ireland, banning conventional tumble dryers.
I spoke out vigorously against this indignity.
From July 1st people living in Northern Ireland discovered that, unlike the rest of the UK, the only new tumble dryers we can buy are the considerably more expensive and more limited (they only operate efficiently at ambient temperatures) heat pump tumble dryers.
This then laid the foundation for the UK Government to bring forward a similar ban in Great Britain, ostensibly in order to prevent divergence.
To this end GB legislation – the Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information (Household Tumble Dryers) Regulations 2026 – now lies before Parliament proposing to introduce the ban in GB between now and January 2027.
In the Brexit referendum the question presented to the people of the UK was not, do you want England to leave the EU, or Northern Ireland to leave the EU or Scotland to leave the EU or Wales to leave the EU? The question was, very simply, do you want the UK to leave the EU. Thus, every single vote of the 17.4 million cast -the biggest democratic vote in our history – regardless of where it was cast, was a vote for the United Kingdom to leave the EU. In this context is was deeply wrong that the vote was not honoured and only Great Britain afforded Brexit, especially in a context where this meant that rather than taking back control, Northern Ireland was forced to give much more of it away as we were completely disenfranchised not in relation to 300 laws, but a staggering 300 areas of law, effectively becoming, to that degree, an EU colony.
Having been subject to this mistreatment, I am not prepared – as someone who believes in our United Kingdom and the integrity of our democracy – to sit back and allow the Government the opportunity of using the failure to provide Brexit for Northern Ireland to justify sabotaging Brexit in Great Britain.
It is bad enough that the biggest democratic vote in the history of our country should have been sabotaged in one part of the UK, let alone that it should now be sabotaged in the rest of the UK.
In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, the last thing that any part of the UK needs is a ban on conventional tumble dryers forcing us to buy their significantly more expensive heat pump equivalents. (In addition to the fact that they are more expensive to buy they will also bring additional expense to run for anyone who locates their tumble dryers in the garage or a shed. Those buildings will now need to be heated because heat pump tumble dryers only operate at ambient temperatures.)
In this context I have tabled a fatal motion to annul the regulations and am very grateful to all Reform Members of Parliament and others who have already signed the motion.
I would now urge as many other MPs to sign it as possible.
Although ‘preventing divergence with Northern Ireland’ provides a subtler justification for the GB tumble dryer/wider reset legislation than simply applying to rejoin the EU, it is not that much more subtle. It depends on arguing that, regardless of the fact that the rationale for Brexit was to ‘take back control’, the instruction by the people to give effect to Brexit can be discharged in good faith by means of giving more of it away; by creatively using our newfound Brexit freedoms to voluntarily subject ourselves to EU law. Whereas when we were members, we had a voice in making EU law, notwithstanding the limitations of the democratic deficit, what Brexit has provided us with is the opportunity to give it up in order to passively submit to the EU laws that others have already made. In what Alice in Wonderland World does this make sense? It has plainly been constructed to enable the government to present before the British people the following piece of sophistry:
‘We left the EU to take back control but since leaving the EU have found ourselves giving much more power away. Whereas once we had a voice in the making of the laws to which we were subject, now increasingly we have no voice. In this context the only sensible way forward is to take back the control we enjoyed as members by rejoining the EU.’
A government that thinks the British people are sufficiently gullible to fall for such transparent manipulation, born of a deliberate attempt to sabotage Brexit rather than honour it in good faith, is doomed to fail. In suggesting that it can take us for fools in this way it eloquently demonstrates just how divorced it has allowed itself to become from the people it claims to represent.
In this context the only way forward is for the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to come together and make it clear to the EU that we are no longer prepared to be subject to their policy of divide and rule and that the whole United Kingdom must be afforded Brexit.
