Max Wilkinson

Your advice is noted, Madam Deputy Speaker. Of course it would be inappropriate to house 1,200 asylum seekers on a military base next to a village of a few hundred people, and of course it would be inappropriate to house them on a site that has never previously been used for residential accommodation. That goes without saying. The Liberal Democrats can back that element of the motion, even if we do not agree with the wording deployed by the official Opposition. I will allow my hon. Friend the Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) to deal with the specifics of the local matter when he contributes later. What must be disputed, however, is the second part of this deeply harmful motion. Brexit has made us all poorer. It has reduced Britain’s standing in the world and made it more difficult for this country to run a safe and controlled asylum system. So why on earth are the Conservatives suggesting leaving the ECHR, which would be Brexit 2.0? Not only would that make the UK a pariah state, but it would likely result in the end of the Brexit deal that they negotiated. The Conservatives often tell us that the Brexit settlement must not be reopened, but that is exactly what they are suggesting. Once again, the Conservative party is arguing that this country should pursue what would basically amount to a no-deal Brexit, except this time it is not a fringe argument being contested among factions in the Conservative party, but the position of the shadow Front Bench and the Leader of the Opposition, backed by all Conservative MPs. Indeed, their leader has told them that they will be barred from their party unless they adopt the position, which is why so many of them have now changed their mind on the issue. The drift of the Conservatives away from the centre-right to the hard-right is a dereliction of duty. It runs counter to many of the traditions in British Conservatism. But we know why they are doing it: they are terrified of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) so they chase after him. They increasingly make his arguments as they prepare for their grubby deal. We all remember what happened in 2019, when the hon. Member for Clacton stood down his candidates in alliance with Boris Johnson. People up and down the country are more than aware that those two parties would engage in the same sort of stitch-up again without a second thought, no matter how much Tory MPs and their leader plead the opposite in public.