Friday, May 18, 2018

Sir Edward Lord Garnier has always been an opponent of Brexit

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Sir Edward Garnier, who was Conservative MP for Harborough until he stood down at last year's election, is included in the list of new peers announced today.

I suppose, following the pattern set by Tennyson, he will become Sir Edward Lord Garnier.

The Guardian report says the peers have been appointed to "bolster her party’s fragile position in the House of Lords".

Yet Sir Edward Lord Garnier has always been an opponent of Brexit.

The day before the referendum he said:
The Conservative Party has built its reputation on economic stability that will be the foundation of our ability to govern successfully over the next four years. We cannot afford to put the British people's hard-won economic security at risk by leaving the EU. A vote to Remain is about safeguarding jobs and our nation's prosperity. 
Nor is it easy to imagine him as lobby fodder in the Lords.

Here he is quoted in the Harborough Mail in November 2016:
Harborough’s Conservative MP Sir Edward Garnier says he is “surprised and disappointed” at his own Government’s reaction to the High Court ruling on Brexit. 
Sir Edward, also a prominent lawyer, said judges were perfectly entitled to make a decision on whether Parliament should discuss and vote on how the UK starts the process of leaving the European Union. 
He added he welcomed a Brexit debate in Parliament. 
“The court expressly said we are not here to discuss whether it’s a good or bad idea to be in or out of the EU” explained Sir Edward. 
“The ruling was to do with Parliamentary approval. The court reached the conclusion that the Government alone can not, through use of the Royal Prerogative, change statute law. 
“It needs to be approved by the whole of Parliament. The whole point of the Civil War (Crown versus Parliament) was to do with that!” 
It would be entirely characteristic of Theresa May's hapless premiership to appoint someone to bolster their position only for him to turn out to be an effective critic of its central policy.

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