Ben Coleman

I find it very hard to take anything that the Conservatives say with any degree of seriousness. What is their explanation for why, after 14 years, public services are on their knees and we have seen a collapse in the economy? We even heard a Conservative Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), say that there has been growth since leaving the European Union “despite Brexit”—even the Conservatives admit that it was a disaster. Nothing will deliver the growth that this country needs faster than signing a good deal with the European Union, slashing red tape and reducing regulation with the biggest market on our doorstep. Opening up markets, kick-starting growth, boosting exports and investments and reducing prices at home—this prize would be welcomed by anyone who is not a crazy ideologue. We on the Government side are not crazy ideologues or prisoners of our past—or of a television programme from the past. The actions that the Conservatives took while in government have damaged the British people. Businesses across the country, and in Chelsea and Fulham, want us to get a good deal from the European Union. People in my constituency do not want us to rejoin the EU, and I am not talking about rejoining. They would like us still to be in it, and they think it has done them damage. The importer of wine in my constituency who has to pay £160 for every consignment he now brings in would like us still to be in the EU and to not have to face that. But they do not want us to spend the next five years renegotiating the deal.