Member

I gently say to noble Lords that this is not just an indignity to the people of Northern Ireland who wish to remain part of the United Kingdom. It is a gross indignity to the United Kingdom as a whole, because it involves 27 states disrespecting the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom by claiming the right not only to make laws for some of it, but to impose international customs and an SPS border dividing the UK in two. There is no other country in the world that I am aware of that has bowed to such an indignity, and it must trouble UK citizens, wherever they live in this country, because it speaks of a Government who no longer believe in the country they are to govern. It speaks of a crisis of confidence that is deeply alienating, certainly to the part of the population who are, in the language of David Goodhart in his important book The Road to Somewhere, “somewhere” people rather than “anywhere” people.