I am going to make a little progress, to be fair to other hon. Members.
There is a second exception, and it is not true to say that triggering article 50 is irreversible. It can be reversed but, as I explained earlier, we would have to follow the specific exception envisaged in article 50(5), which offers a means to reverse the process of departure: we leave and then apply to rejoin. That is the clear language in article 50, which of course is binding as a matter of
UK law. It was a previous Labour Government, with Liberal Democrat support, who signed us up not only to the Lisbon treaty, but explicitly to the fetters we now face. That is why I suffer a little when I hear some of the railing against the difficult legal confines the Government find themselves in not just as a matter of their own policy, but as a matter of law.