Normally anything one says in the House of Commons is a pretty well-kept secret. Last week however, a remark of mine got into the public domain and has prompted some outraged email correspondence.
In response to repeated demands from the Opposition benches for a second referendum in order to reunite the nation, I observed that anyone who thinks that another referendum will bring the nation back together must have been on another planet during the last one.

Overwhelmingly, the expressed preference of my correspondents is for us just to leave the EU without further agreement, and the sooner the better.
Nevertheless, even if some way behind, the second most popular view expressed to me is that there should indeed be a second referendum to settle the matter.

I have always taken the view that the terms on which the last referendum was offered was that it was to be a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity to settle the question of EU membership.
To return to the same question in another referendum before we’ve even implemented the decision of the last one, would fundamentally undermine any residual faith in democracy.

If it were clear however, that the British people repented of their decision to leave the EU, even before we’ve left, then any democrat must accept that voters have a right to change their minds.
Ours is not a democracy that offers one person one vote -but only once! (much in the manner as did so many of our newly independent former colonies which ended up with ‘presidents for life’).
My own estimate however, is that opinion remains as divided as it was when we held our referendum in 2016 and therefore, the case for repeating it remains unconvincing.

A principal demand from opposition MPs is that, if the Government’s EU withdrawal agreement were to be passed by Parliament, then the negotiations with the EU which will then commence to define the terms of our future trading relation with the EU, should themselves be followed by a ‘confirmatory referendum’ on the question of whether to implement the newly negotiated trading relationship, or just to stay in the EU after all.

Apart from the fact that this would just be exasperating. It isn’t what we agreed to: we never suggested in the original Referendum Act, that we would have two referendums, one to decide in principle to leave, and then a second when the terms of a future relationship with the EU had been finalised. And the reason that we never decided to go about it that way should be blindingly obvious:
The starting point is that the EU doesn’t want us to leave. (We are the second largest net financial contributor).
If we present the EU with the finality of a decision to leave, then it is in their interests to negotiate a future relationship in our mutual best interests.
If however, the question of our leaving remains an open one whilst we negotiate the future relationship, then the EU strategy must be to get us to change our mind by making the future relationship as undesirable as possible.

A confirmatory referendum completely undermines our negotiating position for the future relationship; in just the same way as taking no-deal off the table undermined our negotiating position for the withdrawal agreement.

As I have previously observed, the essential problem stems from the PM’s defeat at the election of 2017. Without a significant majority, which is what she sought when she called the election, there was little chance of getting the clean BREXIT that she set out in her Lancaster House and Florence speeches and in her election manifesto.

 Yet the PM continued to raise our expectations by using the same rhetoric about leaving on 29th March and ‘no deal’ being better than a ‘bad deal’, despite the reality of the parliamentary arithmetic.

Encouraged by this perceived guarantee the majority of my correspondents continue to demand that we leave without a deal. Parliament demonstrated its unwillingness to allow a no-deal Brexit in three votes earlier this year and now it has changed the law to prevent it.

Accordingly, the only chance of a no-deal BREXIT now, is if one of the 27 EU member states refuses the application for a further extension of our membership which the law now requires the Government to make.

Weeks ago, when the Government still had freedom of action, I did urge the PM to consider proroguing this REMAIN Parliament to prevent it stopping her from leaving the EU. It is now too late to close that stable door.

To be honest I didn’t expect my advice to be taken. It is very difficult in a parliamentary democracy, to just prorogue parliament and govern without it, it is after all exactly what King Charles the First did, and it didn’t end well.

Unable to get a majority for her ‘high risk’ agreement (I voted for it despite that risk, because I thought the risk of not leaving the EU at all was even greater), the PM has now reached out to find common ground with the Leader of The Opposition, to my dismay and that of my colleagues.

Labour brings two demands to the table.

First they want a ‘confirmatory referendum’ which is just a euphemism for overturning the result of the last one. Anyone who believes that another referendum is a way of healing the division within our nation, was clearly on another planet during the last one.

The second demand is that we agree a permanent customs union (which is the essential core of the EU) and means that our trade policy will be governed by the EU. Mr Corbyn believes that new inclusive arrangements can be negotiated to give us a say, this is nonsense: the EU treaties specifically exclude any such possibility.

The problem with a customs union is that it is all give and no take. We would literally be traded: The EU would be at liberty to make trade agreements with third countries where access to our market was part of the deal, but with no reciprocal access for us to that of the third country. We would subsequently need to try and negotiate that access bilaterally with the third country, but what could we offer, and why would they negotiate? -already having free access to the UK market.

‘Vassal state’ hardly does justice to such a status.  We would have forfeited the principal economic benefit of BREXIT.

Could I vote for such a shadow of BREXIT? 

Only, if it is a question of that, or no BREXIT at all.

If we remain in the EU the ratchet of ever greater political and economic integration will continue relentlessly as it always has done since we first joined.

If we leave however, the ratchet will work in the opposite direction: Political independence and a measure of economic freedom will be intoxicatingly liberating, and will inexorably lead to demands for more.

Equally, without Mrs Thatcher’s rebate, with a requirement to join the Euro, to handover our waters once again, and re-join the Common Agricultural Policy, there would be no prospect of tempting us back.

I am deeply distressed that we haven’t left already and that we face another prolonged extension with tortuous and deeply unsatisfactory negotiations.

BREXIT will be a long haul, a process rather than an event, but the alternative is much, much worse.

At eleven o’clock last Friday night we should have been celebrating our departure from the EU. Instead I was fretting over the probability that we will lose the only opportunity in 46 years to return to the status of an independent nation.

I voted for the PM’s withdrawal agreement for the third time on Friday. 
Notwithstanding the risks that the agreement presents, and which I have explored in this column previously, I believe that the risk of no BREXIT is substantially greater.

What happens now?
Either we leave on 12 April without a deal,
Or we apply for a further extension of Article 50 negotiations.
The EU has made it clear that any such extension will have to be a long one, probably another two years, and no doubt other unwelcome -even humiliating- conditions may also be attached.

Of these two alternatives, the bulk of my correspondents demand a no-deal BREXIT. I suppose it might happen by accident but the EU certainly doesn’t want it and Parliament has now voted several times against it. My estimate is that its likelihood is very small.

So, we are probably looking at a long delay at best, and ultimately cancelling BREXIT altogether at worst.
A long extension to Article 50 -whilst whatever Parliament now fixes upon is negotiated- will, I believe, very probably lead to our remaining in the EU.
With every month that passes status of the decision of the 2016 referendum will erode.
Our political establishment will deliberately seek to present us with alternatives that are so dreadful, that we may opt in the end, to stay. (Indeed, I suspect that this has been their plan all along).
If we opt instead for some variety of ‘soft’ BREXIT, we will face the prospect of becoming a vassal state, our laws and trade policy dictated by the EU, without our voice or vote. (Nevertheless, the very nature of that status might inexorably lead to the demand for it to be remedied. The process of escape could conceivably continue).

If Parliament had accepted the PM’s deal despite all its shortcomings’, we would on 22nd May no longer have been a member of the EU and there would have been powerful correctives to any prospect of returning. We would have been free of the Common Agricultural Policy, free of the Fisheries Policy, and we would regain control of our borders. Anyone arguing for a return would have had to have persuade us to adopt the Euro, Schengen, and very much higher contributions without Mrs Thatcher’s rebate.

If we end up remaining however, the trauma of our failed escape attempt will make it very difficult indeed to persuade Parliament and people to give it another shot in our lifetime.

The only positive thing that I have to say, is that this isn’t over yet.
And, hey, Latvia might veto the request to further extend Article 50.
God save Latvia!

It is not clear whether the PM’s withdrawal agreement will be put to the Commons a third time next week. Soundings are still being taken to see if there is enough support to make it worthwhile.
(what makes no difference to that decision was the Speaker’s ruling earlier this week, that the Government can’t bring back the same questions that have already been defeated.
Yes he’s right about that, but the rules of the Commons are for our convenience, and when they become inconvenient we simply set them aside, and we do that quite frequently.
The Government’s problem isn’t the Speaker, it’s the fact that it can’t get a majority for its motion. If it can get enough MPs to vote for its motion, then it will have no difficulty getting enough to set aside the Speaker’s ruling)

I anticipate that Parliament will on Monday seize the legislative initiative and start putting different soft BREXIT options to the Commons. This has not happened in living memory so we are in completely uncharted territory.
Taken together with the agreement to prolong our EU membership, I am beginning to get the feeling that dream of BREXIT, this once-in-46 year-opportunity, is slipping through our fingers.

The PM told the nation from Downing Street that she was on the side of the people trying to deliver BREXIT and thwarted in that endeavour by Parliament.
It is true that all her efforts and negotiations have been undermined by the fact that she has no majority.
Voters share the PM’s frustration. They write to me all the time telling me so.
I wonder what they expected when they elected a hung parliament, and a Prime Minister with no majority to deliver the BREXIT that they had voted for?

That said, the PM has the power to put herself on the side of the people and thwart her Remainer Parliament.
Parliament has voted to extend our EU membership and it has voted against a no-deal Brexit. These however, are merely expressions of parliamentary opinion, they don’t change the facts.
And the fact remains that the law states that we leave on 29^th March whatever.
Only the Government can introduce the statutory instrument to change the law and extend our EU membership. So, she has the power to leave the EU on 29^th March –which she promised we would 108 times in Parliament- all she has to is withhold that statutory instrument this week.
Will she?
Is she really on the side of the people?
Actions speak louder than words.

School budgets were protected from the reductions in government expenditure which were a stark necessity after the financial crisis and, to be fair, they had a pretty good run.
Now the Schools’ budget is at a record high, but the growth in pupil numbers recently has been rising faster, with the result that the expenditure per pupil has fallen.
Nevertheless, we still spend more per pupil than any other of the G7 leading nations, with the exception of USA, so more than Germany, France and Japan.
So clearly, when a headmistress tells the BBC that things are so bad that she is having to clean the school lavatories herself, we have to ask ourselves what is going wrong?
I asked exactly that question in the Commons when I raised the case with ministers.
I was surprised later to read that the headmistress in question had received a £10,000 pay rise last year, and that the School cleaning budget had doubled from £30,000 to nearly £60,000.
I do recall being equally surprised visiting a school, when I was met by the full-time ‘publicity officer’.

Constituents keep emailing me to demand that we leave the EU on the 29 March without a deal
BUT
A no deal Brexit was rejected by the Commons on Wednesday
And
A extension beyond 29 March was carried on Thursday

The PM’s agreement is not ‘the deal’: that deal is still to be negotiated subsequently during the transition period.

The political declaration which accompanies the agreement could be translated into something enthusiastic Brexiteers might quite like, say Canada++, or it might turn out something very disagreeable like ‘Chequers’ or worse.
We don’t know: so, it’s a risk

I have never been risk averse, but what makes me so nervous is that the nature of the agreement,  with its up-front financial settlement, and it’s default ‘backstop’, puts UK in the weakest of negotiating positions, maximising the risks. That is why my initial assessment that it was a trap ‘went viral’

What I have had to do is assess the risks inherent in the PM’s deal against the risks of our not leaving the EU at all.

There is no prospect of a no deal BREXIT in the current Parliament, the votes have already determined that.

My current assessment is that the risk of no BREXIT is greater than the risk of being trapped in a customs union with the EU consequent upon the PM’s agreement.
Other ERG members and the DUP have, thus far,  reached a different conclusion
I will, of course, continue to listen and reflect.

My neighbour Dr Lewis refused to entertain correspondence by email: sometimes I am tempted to worship at a shrine devoted to his wisdom.

But first a disclaimer: if you are among the majority of my email correspondents who contact me, regularly or irregularly, offering your opinions and helpful advice: I welcome your continuing engagement and none of the following applies to you.

Here are some basic rules.
1. Give your full residential address on every item of correspondence

2. If you are rude, gratuitously unpleasant, or descend to profanity, then your email address will be blocked and any further emails will simply be lost in the aether. If you then wish to contact me you will need to go to the trouble and expense of purchasing a postage stamp.

3. Do not send me internet links and ask for my comments. I do not click on unsolicited links in order to protect my data, and that of constituents who have entrusted me with theirs. Second, I just do not have time to provide commentary on random stuff from the internet.

4. If you have a problem with which you wish to me to assist, please invest the time and effort to state what it is. Don’t just say that it is self-explanatory in an enclosed email chain, with the expectation that I can read your messages in reverse order, and work it all out for myself.

5. Please don’t complain that my responses are ‘curt’. They aren’t. They are brief: brevity is essential when in receipt of 200 emails per day

6. Stop telling me exactly what ‘the British People voted for’. After a lifetime of engaging with voters on their doorsteps and elsewhere, I am quite aware of the extraordinary range of reasons people have in voting in the way that they have. Equally, given the number of representations that I receive, you can be assured that I will have sampled a wider range of opinion than you have, when you tell me that everyone to whom you have spoken agrees with you.

7. If you email me several times per day with your thoughts. I make no complaint, but please do not expect replies.

Now a couple of observations
There is a noticeable overlap between the most strident and vituperative emailers on Brexit and islamophobia. I can’t understand the connection myself, perhaps it’s worthy of a PhD thesis.
There is definitely a rising intolerance, an unwillingness to accept that other people who disagree have simply reached a different conclusion, and instead, to categorise them as traitors, liars and cheats.

So, the sixth-form essay question I leave you with is:
To what extent is social media a cause of our coarsening public discourse, or merely a symptom of it. Discuss.

Police numbers, police powers, and the number of knife crimes are linked, but the causes -like the causes of any other type of violence, lie with disordered families and communities: knife crime is just a symptom.

If the chances of being caught in possession of a knife are high, and the consequences dreadful, then fewer miscreants will risk carrying them -with a consequent reduction in the opportunities to use them.

Taking these in turn:
There has been a reduction in the number of officers available to stop and carry out searches, this is now being addressed with improved funding for recruitment (and, in addition, to more money from central government, our own Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner has decided to increase his council tax precept to the maximum available) but there is no getting away from it, additional resources will have to be provided.
Even more important however, is that the ability and willingness to carry out searches, has been constrained by a policy designed to reduce the perception of racial discrimination. With the increase in stabbings we need urgently to reassess where our priorities lie, and to consider how racial sensitivities can be addressed without sacrificing public safety.

These two address the issue of raising the probability of being caught, but what about the consequences of being caught?
On Monday I asked the Home Secretary if sentences were long enough. He replied
“as recently as 2015, changes were made to sentencing for serious violence crimes, including with bladed weapons. While it is right that the courts make decisions on sentencing based on the evidence and the facts in each case, we have seen a rise in custodial sentences. That is important, too, to make sure the right message and right deterrent are set out for these horrible crimes.”
Nevertheless, later in the week there were press reports of a drug dealer convicted of carrying a knife for second time, who received only a suspended sentence. So, on Thursday I challenged another Home Office minister with that information. She told me
“I must, and will, defend the independence of the judiciary, but my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and I do emphasise the point to the judiciary about the public messaging of sentences. We impose mandatory minimum sentences for those who are found in possession of knives precisely to get the message out there that this is simply not on.”
Well, self-evidently it isn’t working!
The independent judiciary are going to have to raise their game, or their independence will have to be constrained by taking away their discretion.

So much for addressing the symptoms by catching and punishing perpetrators.
What about the causes?
Instruction can be had from the successful experience of Glasgow, which over a decade adopted the approach of treating violence as a disease, treating the causes with initiatives coordinated across the public authorities.

In the last week the finger of blame has also been pointed at school exclusions, because a high proportion of offenders have been expelled. This is a false trail.
Such pupils have a long history of disorder before they are expelled. The issue is one of our failure to properly make arrangements for them after expulsion. Quite the wrong thing to do, would be to constrain the ability of schools to expel a pupil who endangers the safety of others and disrupts their education.

Over preceding weeks the Commons has demonstrated in majorities in two divisions that it will prevent a UK departure from the EU without a deal.
No matter how many constituents write to me demanding that we just leave the EU anyway on 29 March -even without a deal, I cannot change that parliamentary arithmetic.
On Tuesday the PM demonstrated that she too can see the numbers: She announced that if her Withdrawal Agreement is defeated again in mid-March, then she will grant Parliament a vote on extending article 50 to allow more time to secure agreement.
So what has really changed, and what has she conceded?

The real answer is ‘nothing’ (so constituents can stop emailing me with their blood-curdling fulminations about how the PM has betrayed them).
The reality of the parliamentary majority meant that this vote was bound to take place anyway. The PM was merely recognising the inevitable.

On Wednesday the Government put down a simple motion taking note of the PM’s statement the day before. Yvette Cooper tabled an amendment explicitly specifying the vote on no deal.
(I thought it rather impertinent not just to take the PM at her word, but let that be).
20 of us voted against the amendment and more Brexit supporters abstained. 
A number of constituents have asked me why.
It was just a gesture, a protest at the way our negotiations have been constantly undermined, sending a clear message to the EU that Parliament will never allow a no-deal BREXIT.
The  Commission has got that message loud and clear, and accordingly, turns the screw.

The disputed state of Kashmir has caused 4 wars and soured relations between India and Pakistan since 1947.
The events of the last couple of weeks brought a long statement to the House of Commons. There were questions from across the house, but in particular from MPs representing seats with Kashmiri diaspora populations.
No matter how the questions were couched they all boiled down to one essential: “what is the Government going to do about it?”

It reminded me of my ministerial experience of visiting a number of Commonwealth countries and being asked by officials, ministers, opposition politicians, and ordinary folk, to do all sorts of things as if UK was still the colonial power.
That was not the case however, in Pakistan or India. I found that whilst we got on very well indeed at state government level where they were very pleased to see us. With the federal governments however, there was an awkwardness, even a ‘frostiness’.
I got the impression that they regard us in the same way that one might with a rather embarrassing relation that you really don’t want to have to invite to your wedding.
Of course, we should use whatever influence we have in the pursuit of peace, but we should be realistic in our expectations and recognise that in particular cases that influence is very limited indeed.