Jim Allister

It is strikingly surreal to be debating a King’s Speech from a Government who are patently on their last legs. This is the King’s Speech of a Prime Minister who is working out his notice in Downing Street. It is equally surreal that after the biggest electoral trouncing that any Government have ever had, particularly in red wall seats, and in areas that voted strongly pro-Brexit, the Prime Minister thinks that the answer is more Europe. Dear help his wit, if that is his solution. Of course, that is also the solution of the wannabe Prime Ministers who are queuing up, bristling with European credentials—although I notice that Andy Burnham is feverishly trying to cover his Europhile tracks, because he thinks they might not go down too well in Makerfield. It is the height of folly for any Government who have been so trounced in an election in those areas to think that the answer is more Europe, but we are told that that answer will come in the European partnership Bill. I suspect that it will be a mere shell of a Bill, loaded with Henry VIII powers, so that as we increasingly align with the EU, this House will not even have the right to scrutinise those measures. What does “dynamic alignment” mean? I can tell the House what it means, because I represent a part of the United Kingdom that, sadly, has continued to be dynamically aligned with the EU. It means that we become a supplicant rule taker. It means that we are subject to laws that we do not make and cannot change. It means that laws of absolute folly impose costs on our constituents. Let me give but one example. Northern Ireland is subject to the European vehicle type regulations. What does that mean? It means that buying a new car in Northern Ireland costs £4,000 more than it does in Great Britain, because it can be imported to and used in Northern Ireland only if it meets EU standards. That is what it is to be a supplicant rule taker in the United Kingdom.