The speech made by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) was one of the best speeches I have ever heard from the Labour Front Bench in its tone, its honest acceptance of the difficult choices being made by all of us in this House and its fundamental acceptance that we, by a majority of six to one, passed a decision to the people that we have to respect. This debate is simply about facilitating that, which is why so many of us will ensure that there is a large majority tomorrow evening to vote in favour of triggering the process for which our people asked.
I will also follow—some may think, rather counterintuitively—the other remarks of the hon. and learned Gentleman who led for the Labour party. I sincerely believe that this process is not a triumph of nationalism, or of us being apart from them. It is quite the opposite: part of a new internationalism and recognition of our common citizenship of the whole world. We stand ready to break free of the protectionist barriers erected by the EU that have so damaged much of the third world, and rejoin the world at large. As a former Prime Minister of Australia said, “Britain is back.”
Of course, we crave the familiar—self, family, friends, village, county, country or even continent—but we know that the human race is one and that human dignity is indivisible. That dignity has not been respected in our continent in the past. By the spring of 1945, Europe had descended into such a spiral of hate, war and destruction that people understandably despaired. Noble spirits such as Schuman, Adenauer and De Gasperi understood that the familiar divisions of home, tribe and nation were so dangerous when exaggerated that they needed to be not abolished, but overcome, in a
process that became the European Union. No longer would one nation be able to use iron and steel for its own chauvinistic, fratricidal and destructive ends. Then came the freedoms of travel and work. That is why they set the project in motion.