Peter Dowd

I do not think it is a humiliating concession, but if it is a concession at all, I think it is an attempt, given the circumstances that we faced, to reach an agreement with trading partners in the light of the decision of the British people. We live in a world where we do not get everything we want. We live in a world where there is a little bit of give and a little bit of take, and sometimes we are able to give more than we take, and vice versa. As I have said, however, I do not want to go down that rabbit hole, because I do not think it is necessarily the subject of today’s debate. We touch on it, and it is pertinent, but I do not think it should dominate the whole debate. There is no doubt that the subject is fraught with all the concerns and anxieties and consternation to which I referred earlier, and we have to operate in the wider political environment and milieu in which countries have to operate all the time. I think it only fair to point out that the law of unintended consequences may decide to poke its head around the door, and perhaps even to walk into the Chamber, and there will be nothing that we can do. That is the very nature of the issue that confronts us. There are no easy solutions. There are no easy answers to difficult questions. There are no off-the-cuff responses that will sort out the issue. That is a statement of the obvious.