Parliament has been in recess for Easter so it has been a relatively quiet week for me in the constituency, whilst international events have swept the world from the brink of war over Syria to the brink of war over North Korea.

One of the dangers of writing a column at the beginning of the week for publication in the Forest Journal mid-week, is that occasionally one is overtaken by events. Nevertheless, I feel confident that we will all still be here next week and that things won’t have changed that much, notwithstanding some of the hyperbole in the news headlines suggesting that we at the most dangerous point in international relations since the Cuban missile crisis and that we are approaching the brink of thermo-nuclear Armageddon. I continually remind my constituents and correspondents of General William Slim’s dictum that nothing is ever as bad as it is reported.

Over the bank holiday weekend I’ve managed a bit of gardening and some routine maintenance on my Morris Minor. At no stage have I felt the random urge to go and do something I’ve always wanted to, on the grounds that it may be my last chance before the world ends.

None of this however, should be taken as in any way a denial of the dreadful state that much of the world is in, or as an attempt to trivialise it. North Korea is a ghastly place, much of it a vast prison camp for the half-starved rural population. The slighted evidence of lese-mageste towards the regime will prove fatal to the offenders, their families and any known associates. Profession of Christianity attracts the heaviest of penalties. As Kim Jong-un’s late brother discovered in Thailand recently, the regime’s murderous reach extends well beyond the hermit kingdom’s own borders.

As for Syria, our TV screens tell us all we need to know of the suffering there. I was surprised to hear however, a senior parliamentary colleague in an interview, state that President Assad could have no rational motive in launching a chemical attack at this stage in the war, attracting such international condemnation, when otherwise everything was going his way.

That Assad was indeed responsible, was proved beyond doubt, when he piped-up to insist that the whole incident had been completely faked (despite respected journalist witness accounts, and – even more surprisingly – contradicting the Russian carefully crafted cover story that it was the result of a rebel chemical weapons factory).

To suggest that Assad was without motive, is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of his regime. The Assads share a great deal in common with the Kim dynasty of North Korea: their purpose is the same; to terrorise their subjects into submission by demonstrating that they will stop at absolutely nothing.

To suggest, as I have, that next week we will still be here and the world won’t have changed very much, is not necessarily a good thing. We should always count our blessings that we can do normal stuff like mow the lawn and wash the car. For so many of our fellow citizens of the world, ordinary every-day life is very different – and we’ve only considered just two of the world’s grizzliest places.

Last week’s:

Gassing of Khan Sheikhoun
After the ghastly scenes from the deployment of sarin nerve agent by the Assad regime in rebel held Idlib, and before the USA response with 59 tomahawk cruise missiles, I received a flurry of emails from constituents demanding that ‘something be done’.

I reply by asking my correspondents to give me a clearer idea of what he or she thinks that ‘something’ ought to be.
We already apply sanctions, asset freezes, and we have withdrawn diplomatic relations. Is there really an appetite to get even more involved in another conflict in that deeply troubled region?
I hope so, but I have not yet detected it.

In my response to the emails I pointed out that the key moment of our failure came in August 2013 when Assad previously used chemical weapons, crossing President Obama’s declared ‘red line’. Instead of taking the threatened punitive action, neither the USA nor the UK did so. Indeed, in Parliament we voted down the Government’s request to take action: we chose explicitly to do nothing. Inaction can have dreadful consequences as the children and parents of Khan Sheikhoun have now discovered.

In 2013 Russia, though involved, had not deployed its own forces to any great extent, so our freedom to respond militarily would have been much greater than it is now, when the risk of a clash with Russia is so much greater. Of course I said that two days before President Trump did take the risk of responding militarily, it is far too soon to tell what the consequences will be.

To be fair, I think our biggest misjudgement came much earlier than August 2013. Our failure was at the very outset of the rebellion in 2011, through our refusal to arm the Free Syrian Army. We supported its objectives but we sent it only medical supplies and radios. The consequence was, as a fighting force, it was completely overtaken by the vastly better armed and financed Islamist militias.

Russia’s initial response to the US military action has to be to condemn it as an ‘act of aggression against a sovereign state contrary to international law’.
This doctrine that sovereign states can act with complete impunity within their own borders goes back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia which ended the 30 years war in Europe. Russia may still adhere to it, but the rest of the civilised world has moved on: Chapter VII of the UN Charter allows action to be taken in the interests of international peace and security.

The carnage and suffering in Syria has now lasted longer than the Second World War, and with profound and destabilising consequences for Europe. Something has to be done to bring it to an end –but what?

After the ghastly scenes from the deployment of sarin nerve agent by the Assad regime in rebel held Idlib, and before the USA response with 59 tomahawk cruise missiles, I received a flurry of emails from constituents demanding that ‘something be done’.

I reply by asking my correspondents to give me a clearer idea of what he or she thinks that ‘something’ ought to be.
We already apply sanctions, asset freezes, and we have withdrawn diplomatic relations. Is there really an appetite to get even more involved in another conflict in that deeply troubled region?
I hope so, but I have not yet detected it.

In my response to the emails I pointed out that the key moment of our failure came in August 2013 when Assad previously used chemical weapons, crossing President Obama’s declared ‘red line’. Instead of taking the threatened punitive action, neither the USA nor the UK did so. Indeed, in Parliament we voted down the Government’s request to take action: we chose explicitly to do nothing. Inaction can have dreadful consequences as the children and parents of Khan Sheikhoun have now discovered.

In 2013 Russia, though involved, had not deployed its own forces to any great extent, so our freedom to respond militarily would have been much greater than it is now, when the risk of a clash with Russia is so much greater. Of course I said that two days before President Trump did take the risk of responding militarily, it is far too soon to tell what the consequences will be.

To be fair, I think our biggest misjudgement came much earlier than August 2013. Our failure was at the very outset of the rebellion in 2011, through our refusal to arm the Free Syrian Army. We supported its objectives but we sent it only medical supplies and radios. The consequence was, as a fighting force, it was completely overtaken by the vastly better armed and financed Islamist militias.

Russia’s initial response to the US military action has to be to condemn it as an ‘act of aggression against a sovereign state contrary to international law’.

This doctrine that sovereign states can act with complete impunity within their own borders goes back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia which ended the 30 years war in Europe. Russia may still adhere to it, but the rest of the civilised world has moved on: Chapter VII of the UN Charter allows action to be taken in the interests of international peace and security.

The carnage and suffering in Syria has now lasted longer than the Second World War, and with profound and destabilising consequences for Europe. Something has to be done to bring it to an end – but what?

This address was given to the Lymington United Nations Association on 25th March 2017 and was followed by one and a half hours of questions.

This Dangerous World

What a doom laden title. It reminds me of one of my favourite books The Coffee Table Book of Doom. Here is a flavour from the advertising blurb:
“…with the apocalypse at hand, don’t fret about dying uninformed. The Coffee Table Book of Doom is a revelatory…superbly illustrated and erudite compendium of all the 27 doom-laden horsemen we need to worry about – personal doom, gender erosion, asteroid impact, pandemics, super storms, sexual ruin – and much more besides.”

Actually, the definitive ending of the world was supposed to have been in 2012 when the 5000 year old Mayan civilisation’s calendar ran out.

We can comfort ourselves with the thought that every generation thought that it would be the last. Even Our Lord predicted that ”these things will come to pass” within the lifetime of some of his listeners –Matthew 16.28 (he was right: the second temple was destroyed in 70 AD and the world as they had known it really did come to a dramatic and very violent end).

Let us start with a brief tour of some of the current threats to world stability and prosperity.
One of the falsehoods of the EU referendum campaign was the IMF analysis that stated that BREXIT would be the greatest current threat to the world Economy. It was nonsense, but there are major threats to the world economy:
The very sticky, if not completely fixed currency exchange rates, are preventing many countries from emerging from recession and to deal with their sovereign debt, or rebalancing trade surpluses and deficits;
The very low interest rates which have reduced incentives to save and invest, with consequent weak productivity growth;
The danger to the free trade and prosperity potentially posed by the new US administration’s protectionist rhetoric.

One symptom of all the world’s troubles is the tide of humanity on the move, in pursuit of safety and a livelihood. Although many are fleeing violence and persecution, the overwhelming motive is the need to find a secure future: in the end it is all about jobs. The world needs 600 million new jobs over the next decade if we are to avoid a growing army of young people who are under-employed, increasingly frustrated and angry. That itself is a threat to our future, and can only be addressed by investment in the growth of the world economy.

Climate change is a threat to our entire planet. The agreement in Paris in December 2015 signalled that, at last, 195 UN member states were taking it seriously enough to do something about it, but now this consensus has been undermined by the declared policy stance, and early actions of the US administration.

In the 21st century we have the obscenity of famine looming in South Sudan, Yemen and northern Nigeria. South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, is stricken by drought –an entirely predictable phenomenon for which relief can be planned in advance. What is really starving the people is a vicious civil war. Warfare is the cause of Starvation in northern Nigeria with Boko Haram, and in Yemen where the Houthi rebels – armed by Iran- have overthrown the legitimate government which is backed by a coalition of Gulf States.

Which brings me to the civil wars within Islam between the orthodox Sunni, Shi’ism, and Sunni Islamists. At the very least this religious conflict is a feature –if not the entire cause- of the conflicts in Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Syria. It threatens to destabilise Jordan, Lebanon, and the Sahel. It contributes to so much violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and indeed on the streets of the western nations. I think it is proper to refer to it as a civil war within Islam because, notwithstanding the attacks launched at minorities, Christians and secular governments, overwhelmingly the greater number of victims are themselves Muslims.

Looking elsewhere, there is no difficulty in identifying other dangers to peace and stability:
A resurgent Russia, a gangster state laundering its corrupt cash in the world’s financial system, has fostered war and violence in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. It has intervened in Syria, is shaping up to do so in Libya, and is suspected of having launched cyber attacks on the Baltic States;
China’s militarisation of the South China Sea threatens Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, The Philippines, international navigable waters, and the supremacy of the USA in a worrying potential new area of conflict;
The hermit state of North Korea’s development of increasingly longer range missiles to deliver its nuclear capability adds perhaps the most unpredictable element to our brief tour.

We’ve hardly scratched the surface, but let’s return briefly to Palestine where we began.
Our Department for International Development employees in Jerusalem, who travel into the city daily on a tortuous commute from the areas around Bethlehem, are young people in their mid-20s to mid-30s. The only interaction that they ever have with an Israeli subject is when, during that journey, they are challenged to show their papers under the operation of what I would call the ‘pass laws’ that exist to ensure that people’s ability to live, stay and work in their own city is restricted.
I entirely understand how we got to that dreadful situation: because of the obscenity of suicide bombing. Israel could not possibly tolerate the wholesale slaughter of its innocent citizens. The key question for us is, having got to this dreadful situation, how we get back from it. It is one thing to demand, quite properly, face-to-face negotiations, but pursuing a policy in respect of illegal settlements makes those negotiations much more difficult, particularly when that policy is driven by an increasingly strident ideology.

In February when a Bill was passed in the Knesset retrospectively legalising 4,000 homes in illegal settlements, the Israeli Minister of Culture welcomed the result, saying that it was
“the first step towards complete…Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.”
The words “Judea and Samaria” were chosen carefully.
When President Trump was elected, the Israeli Interior Minister, no less, welcomed it by saying that we are witnessing
“the birth pangs of the Messiah when everything has been flipped to the good of the Jewish people”.
it is absolutely clear that a significant proportion of the Israeli political establishment is in thrall to an increasingly strident settler movement that regards Palestine as a biblical theme park— Judea and Samaria.

The more strident and aggressive outriders of the settler movement are not people we would necessarily welcome as our neighbours. I particularly refer to what is now happening in Hebron. Setting aside some of the ruses that are used to acquire property, when the settlers move in, it is actually their Palestinian neighbours who have to erect grilles and meshes over their windows, and fences around their yards, to exclude projectiles and refuse. The reaction of the security forces to protect their newly resident citizens is to impose an exclusion zone, and to cordon off and sanitise the access and areas around those properties. So proceeding, Palestinians find that they are excluded from the heart of their city and, indeed, from the environs of their own homes. It has all the appearance of what we used to describe as petty apartheid.

Secretary Kerry explained at the turn of the year why the United States would no longer pursue its policy of exercising its veto in respect of UN Security Council resolution 2334. He said that if the two-state solution were abandoned, Israel could no longer be both a democracy and a Jewish state because, as a consequence of abandoning the policy, it would have to accommodate Palestinian citizens and all their civil and political rights within the state of Israel. My fear is that, on the contrary, there is an element within the Israeli establishment that believes that it can do exactly that. It can, while the world is distracted by more pressing conflicts elsewhere, proceed to annex the West Bank of the Jordan and to tell the Palestinians to seek their civil rights in Jordan, or in reserved ‘bantustans’.

So, what is to be our response to all the dangers and problems that confront us in the world?
I think it must be threefold:
First, we must keep faith with the rules based post WWII order. That means reforming and strengthening the United Nations system.
Second, we must hold fast to the principles of free trade, whatever may be the short term temptations of protectionism. Trade dwarfs aid, and the agenda for free trade, so important to our own prosperity, is of even greater significance to the developing world, and the least developed nations.
Third, we need to stick to the commitment we made over 40 years ago to spend 0.7% of our national income on development aid internationally. We are the only G7 nation, thus far, to have done so. It is important that we continue to give leadership to the world in this vital area. If we had met the commitment when we made it, and if all the other wealthy nations had done so too, we might now be dealing with a much more secure and stable world than we are now facing.

I heard an item on the wireless about the name that has been given to the Government’s ‘Great Repeal Bill’ which legislates for our exit from the European Union. The commentators claimed that no such bill had ever been so named before. I think they are wrong, and that they have ignored the statute of repeal passed by Parliament after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and known as the ‘Great Repealer’.

They share a name but their intentions are complete opposites. The aim of the 1660 statute of was to wipe the slate clean, expunging all the laws passed under Cromwell’s Commonwealth. The modern statute, shortly to be introduced, will have the very different effect of incorporating all EU regulation into UK law.

For a Eurosceptic like myself, the thought of accepting all that ghastly EU regulation into our own law, just at the moment when we thought were about to escape from it, requires some explanation.

That explanation is twofold. First, after 42 years and thousands of items of complicated legislation, the task of unwinding it all in the two years available before we are out of the EU, is just far too time consuming and difficult, especially when all government effort is focussed on detailed negotiation of our exit terms. Much more sensible therefore, to incorporate all current EU regulation so that our exit is seamless, and leaving us the luxury of repealing or amending it at our leisure over coming years.

Second, by retaining – at least for the present – all EU regulation, we will begin our status as an independent trading nation with exactly the same rules and standards as the rest of the EU. This will make it much easier for us to trade with the EU, making our departure somewhat less economically disruptive.

Much has been made of the ‘Henry VIII powers’ that will be in the bill, and the synthetic indignation expressed about them by leading opposition politicians. The name suggests that the Government is seeking to rule by proclamation in the way that Henry VIII did (and link it by association, with Henry’s tyrannical rule – he may have executed as many as 72,000 people, a much larger total than that achieved by Bloody Mary his daughter).

I hate to spoil a good story with facts, but this is a load of nonsense. The so called Henry VIII powers are not uncommon in parliamentary bills. Often bills will grant ministers powers to make detailed regulations once the bill has become law. Somewhat less frequently, that power to regulate will extend to enabling the minister to amend other acts of Parliament. This power is narrowly defined in the statute, and is subject to detailed parliamentary scrutiny: any such regulation must be approved by Parliament in a statutory instrument by a vote in both Houses. Not quite Henry VIII’s style.

The reason for granting these powers to alter the law by ministerial regulation is to enable the huge volumes of legal changes that will need to be made, without tying up our legislative programme in Parliament for years to come.

We have other fish to fry.

One of the greatest falsehoods presented to us during the referendum campaign last summer, was the International Monetary Fund’s pronouncement (no doubt prompted at our own government’s suggestion) that an exit by UK from EU presented the principal threat to the health of the world economy.

That is not to say however, that there aren’t very substantial threats to both the world economy and to our own: There are; but they have little to do with our decision to leave the EU, even if they are presented as such.

Consumer confidence has taken a big hit with rising inflation – at 2.3% in February. Given that consumer spending drives almost two thirds of our economic activity, denting that confidence can have a severe impact. It is most certainly responsible for the very thin time that our high streets have been experiencing recently, with retail sales actually falling. The same depressing trend is evident in figures for recent mortgage approvals. These figures will be seized upon as vindication by those who predicted the Brexit ‘economic shock’.

Consumers are taking a hit because prices are rising; and prices are rising because of the devaluation of the pound which will, of course, be presented as a consequence of Brexit. It isn’t. Rather it is a consequence of the huge and growing trade deficit that we have been running over recent years – at almost 10% of our national product. What is more, we desperately needed this devaluation to correct the imbalance in our economy. It will move us back towards a trade equilibrium by making our exports more competitive whilst choking off some of our seemingly insatiable demand for imports.
Whilst the higher prices hurt consumers in the short term, they are nevertheless a necessary correction for the long term health of our economy.

The world economy is in desperate need of the flexibility we have recently achieved, because currency exchange rates have become increasingly sticky – almost fixed. There are countries – not least in parts of Europe – desperate for a devaluation similar to one that we have seen, in order to rescue themselves from becoming more and more uncompetitive. If Brexit could be blamed for Sterling’s devaluation, it would be a boon to the world economy and not a threat.

We will become accustomed to every economic development being presented in the worst possible light – and blamed on Brexit.

For so many of my friends in Scotland the announcement by their government that they are to have a second independence referendum, was greeted with dismay. They regarded the last one as so divisive and unpleasant that they have no enthusiasm to repeat the process, particularly given that they were assured that the last one was to be a once in a generation experience.
I expect we’d feel the same if were told we had re-run the EU referendum.

What generated substantial correspondence from my constituents the last time that Scotland had an independence referendum, was the question of the franchise: There are a surprisingly large number of people living in the New Forest, who regard themselves as Scottish and believe that they should have a right to vote on the future status of what they see as their own country.

The difficulty is that we are all British subjects and there is no legal means of distinguishing between us as citizens of our kingdom’s constituent parts. The right to vote in Scotland, like voting in any other part of Great Britain, is dependent only upon having a residential address there (assuming you are old enough, a UK subject or a citizen of the Republic of Ireland for general elections, or of any other EU country for local elections).

If the residents of Scotland are to have a second independence referendum, and were they, this time, to vote to leave the UK, one of the principal difficulties would be in defining our separate nationalities. How would we go about it?
Would it be decided simply on where you are living on the determining date?
How else could we proceed, given the extent to which we are inter-married?
How would people claiming a heritage in one part of the Kingdom, but living in another, have their nationality resolved?
An independent Scotland might well set about this task quite differently from the remainder of the UK, leaving some people potentially stateless.
At the very least it would be a very distressing and dismal process.

The Union of England and Scotland over 400 years ago was sought by the Scottish Parliament for financial reasons, after a currency crisis. Since then however, we have effectively become one country and one people to such an extent that unwinding the union will make our leaving the EU a piece of cake by comparison. I can quite understand the lack of enthusiasm about putting the question a second time.

I have received half a dozen of emails from self-employed people complaining about the budget proposals to change the way that they are taxed.

The problem, as I see it, is not the policy itself, but David Cameron’s pledge when he said “as long as I am Prime Minister we will not put up national insurance contributions”. This became a manifesto pledge at the last election.

Trying to get round this by saying this was only meant to apply to class 4 national insurance contributions looks distinctly shifty. It would have been much better, though still controversial, to have said that pledge was made by David Cameron and he is no longer in office, and that our dramatically changed situation demands that the policy be changed too.

As to the substance of the Chancellor’s policy, I believe it to be fair. Self-employment enjoys advantages over being an employee when it comes to tax, and because self-employment is growing fast we are losing £billions annually because of this more generous tax treatment.

Changes in public policy, principally the fact that the self-employed will now have the same rights as employees to the state pension, have substantially removed the reasons for the more generous tax treatment of the self-employed. In fairness therefore, it follows that the tax treatment should be made more equal – which is what the Chancellor proposed.

My email correspondents complain that this is unfair because they don’t get entitlement to sick pay. True, but then their costs are lower because they are not paying employers’ national insurance contributions either.

They complain that they do not get maternity or paternity benefits, but I distinctly heard the Chancellor say that this would be changed to include them.

They complain that they do not get holiday pay. This is a complete red herring: tax and national insurance doesn’t cover holiday pay for any commercial enterprise. It is just part of the cost of labour that companies of any kind need to factor into their overall cost of doing business.

Whilst I believe that the policy of more equal treatment is fair, the question arises as to whether it will discourage entrepreneurs and risk-takers from making a go of it in self-employment, which is vital for the prosperity and growth of our economy. I certainly believe that we need to develop a tax system that more generously rewards these entrepreneurs with a risk appetite. Our current difficulty however, is that there is no way of distinguishing them from any other service provider who has simply chosen to be self-employed for the tax advantage of doing so. Equally, and for the same reason, it suits many undertakings to avoid having employees and to pay them instead as contractors.

I’m glad that the Prime Minister has delayed the legislation while we look at all these things in the round.
As for the present media storm, might its intensity have anything to do with the fact that so many of our broadcasters and journalists are being paid, not as employees, but as limited companies, or am I being just too cynical?

Bizarrely, last Thursday evening, over 9 months after the decisive referendum result in favour of leaving the EU, I was at the Cannon Street offices of CMS, the city law firm, debating the question that ‘The UK is leaving the EU’ together with my Colleague Sir Henry Bellingham MP. Against us, and arguing that we won’t leave, were Lord Butler, a former cabinet secretary, and Lord Lester, our most eminent human rights lawyer.

After 15 public debates across the south of England in the run up to the referendum last June, and two of them in the New Forest – head to head with Sir Vince Cable, am I surprised that here I am, still debating whether the decision of the voters will be implemented?

No, I am not. European elites have ‘form’ when it comes to overturning the decisions of voters. The Irish twice voted in referendums not to accede to European treaties, only to be told to repeat the process until they came up with the right answer – which they obligingly did. French and Dutch referendums both decisively rejected the EU Constitutional Treaty (the Dutch by the impressive margin of 68% to 32%). Yet, in all its essentials, that constitution became the Treaty of Lisbon without risking running it past French and Dutch voters again.

In very brief summary of our debate: Their Lordships thought it inevitable that the deal negotiated by the Government under Article 50 will be a poor one. They were equally certain that Parliament will have a ‘meaningful vote’ on the outcome (even if that vote is a vote of no confidence in the Government), and that Parliament will overturn it, and we’d give up on leaving.

My case is that the very suggestion of a ‘meaningful parliamentary vote’ (let alone a second referendum) is a standing invitation to the EU to overturn our decision by punishing us with such dreadful terms that we are bound to refuse.

The only way remove the temptation for them to adopt such a strategy is to maintain the certainty that we are already walking away, that the decision has been made, and that there is no going back.
Only then will it be absolutely clear to them, that their best strategy is to negotiate the optimum deal for themselves, which – given our shared identity of mutual interests, will also approximate to the best deal for ourselves.
The question isn’t ‘are we leaving the EU?’
We are.
Rather, the real question is ‘where are we going?’
Few of us went into the polling booth on 23rd of June entirely of one mind. Whilst I was convinced that voting to leave was for the best, nevertheless I was thoroughly aware that there would be costs, disadvantages and risks. It is now the duty of the Government, individuals, and every enterprise in the Kingdom to seize the opportunities that are opening up to us, whilst working to minimise the costs and risks.

This should be the joint endeavour of the whole nation following the decision that voters have made. Unfortunately, a minority continue to put their effort into contriving circumstances in which the decision by voters can be thwarted.

I visited my alma mater St Andrews University last week to deliver a seminar and a lecture, and have an obligatory swim in the North Sea. I hadn’t been back in over thirty years. It all looked very much the same but the changes were very significant.

First, the students were much more focussed on their studies than my generation were. This is hardly surprising given the students are now paying very substantial fees which my generation did not. Little wonder then that we treated our time at university more like a luxury consumer good, where the current generation treats it more like an investment from which they need to secure a return.

Second, the university has doubled in size. The income from tuition fees has enabled so many more places to be made available. In my day only a very much smaller proportion of sixth formers could expect to get a place at university (and because there were many fewer of us, the absence of fees was affordable). It was clear to me many more students were evidently enjoying the opportunity of a university education consequent upon the decision to charge fees.

Third, St Andrews is, of course, a Scottish university and the Scottish government does not believe that Scottish students should have to pay tuition fees – so here is a salutary lesson: the numbers of Scottish students studying at the University is capped at 20% of the total student body. The reason for this is simple; because Scottish students don’t pay fees, the university cannot afford to take so many of them. The ‘privilege’ afforded to Scottish students of not having to pay fees is actually denying many of them the opportunity to study at one of the best universities in their own land.

Whenever sixth formers visit Westminster I always try and encourage them not to be daunted at the prospect of incurring a very significant debt in order to pay for a university education. They won’t have to start repaying the loan until they are earning over £21,000 per year, and even then the repayment schedule is affordable with very modest monthly repayments. The key issue, as anyone with a mortgage will know, is not how many thousands of pounds you still have outstanding, but can you make the monthly repayments, and the student loan scheme is designed to ensure that they can. As for the outstanding capital sum, if they haven’t repaid it all after 30 years it is written off anyway, which is a much more advantageous system than a graduate tax, which is the alternative, and which they would end up paying for the rest of their working lives.

There is a form of African post-colonial democracy where presidents, even if originally elected, nevertheless rule for life. Call it ‘one person: one vote; -Once’!

Of course, we reject this as any kind of democracy at all. Voters a right to change their minds. That is why Tony Blair has every right to argue that voters got it all wrong on the 23rd of June last year and that it is his mission to persuade us to change our minds.

I campaigned to leave the Common Market in 1975 and, whilst I accepted the referendum result, I never changed my mind and I always took every opportunity to argue that the wrong decision had been made.

I had hoped that following last June’s result, the political agenda would move to on to focus on so many of the other complicated and pressing questions facing us. Unfortunately however, every day I still receive a trickle of email correspondence from constituents demanding that I set aside the referendum result and use my votes in Parliament to prevent us from leaving the EU. Mr Blair’s intervention will, no doubt, inspire further such attempts to persuade me. What I thought was very significant about both his speech and also the correspondence that I receive, is that there is no new argument being made. Rather, it is merely the re-statement of arguments that were thoroughly rehearsed in the referendum campaign last year.

So, given that the case hasn’t changed, and that even Mr Blair acknowledged that there is currently no public appetite to reconsider, what then is their strategy?
It is to delay as long as possible until ‘something turns up’ and the public changes its mind. It is a strategy of clutching at any straw that happens to come to hand.

Their Lordships and the Opposition in the Commons will take every opportunity to delay. The Article 50 bill has, so far, proved something of a disappointment to them in this respect, but they are salivating at the prospect of the Government’s statute of repeal shortly to begin its long and tortuous progress.

The longer they can delay, the longer there is for the public to tire and to lose interest. The longer there is for cold winds to blow from elsewhere, for events to intervene, after all, we live in an increasingly unpredictable world.

The parliamentary opponents hide behind the need for ‘proper’ scrutiny, but their strategy is really one of delay and desperation. Democracy demands that they retain their freedom to continue to argue and that the voters made a mistake, but to delay the implementation of the properly made decision of the voters is a denial of democracy. In effect it is an attempt to apply the ‘one person: one vote; – but only once’ rule to the plebiscite we had in 1975.