Heroine of Brexit – Anne Marie Morris MP

One Tory Brexiteer voted the right way last night

Anne Marie Morris MP

In the last few days, the pro-Brexit ERG group of Conservative MPs quietly decided to compromise on Brexit. One of their members did not.

Anne Marie Morris has been the MP for Newton Abbot in Devon since 2010 when she took the seat from the LibDems. In that time she has grown her majority consistently, from 523 votes in 2010, to 11,288 in 2015, to 17,160 in 2017. This is an extraordinary performance from any MP.

Last night in the House of Commons, Anne Marie Morris was the only pro-Brexit Conservative MP not to back the Brady amendment. All other members of the ERG did so. In voting against this amendment, Ms Morris defied the party whip.

Anne Marie Morris MP

This ‘Brady’ amendment effectively accepts the Prime Minister’s atrocious Withdrawal Agreement (WA), and asks for “alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border”. In simple terms this means accepting all the unacceptable aspects of the WA, provided a compromise can be reached on the Backstop.

Here is what Anne Marie Morris wrote on 21 January 2019 :-

“The vote on the withdrawal agreement finally took place last week and unsurprisingly was defeated. The agreement did not deliver Brexit and would have tied us to the European Union on worse terms than we currently have. It would not allow us sovereignty over our laws, over our borders, or over our sea. The backstop would see the UK remain in a customs union with the EU, whereby the UK would fully align itself to the EU’s customs regime, including its external tariff schedule, and as a result we would be unable to sign trade agreements with other countries.
“Under the agreement we would also be obliged to follow and implement all EU legislation with no say in its creation. The backstop was supposedly temporary but has every likelihood of being indefinite, with the EU effectively holding a veto over our ability to leave. It is a one-sided agreement that does not protect the UK’s economic interests or sovereignty and requires us to pay £39 billion to the EU with no trade deal in return.
“I believe leaving on World Trade Organisation terms would leave us in a sensible starting place in order to negotiate a free trade agreement with the European Union. My work on the Public Accounts Committee examining the preparedness of the civil service for no deal has given me the confidence to support walking away. A managed no deal under WTO rules is better than a bad deal, and this is a very bad deal.
“Leaving outright in March under WTO is a cleaner break and more democratic than continuing to draw out this process and remaining within the Single Market and Customs Union without any say over the rules. This would then provide us a stable position from which future trade negotiations can be conducted.”

Observations

We have been told by members of the ERG that compromise is essential in order to avoid an overturning of Brexit. “The numbers aren’t there”, they say.

Yesterday morning we told Deputy Chairman of the ERG, Steve Baker MP, that :-

“For the record, we are implacably opposed. The Withdrawal Agreement is an abomination.”

We know that other Brexit groups similarly expressed their opposition after us. We will reiterate more detail about the WA and why it is not Brexit in another summary article shortly.

Let’s be positive

Here we have one MP in Anne Marie Morris who has stood by her principles. She disobeyed the party whip and voted against the amendment.

We believe she did so for the same reasons we would have voted against. It is not only the Backstop in the WA that is an abomination, the rest of it simply isn’t Brexit.

We hereby award Ms Morris our accolade of “Brexit Warrior”.

If readers wish to express their support to Anne Marie Morris MP, her email is annemarie@annemariemorris.co.uk and her constituency office number is 01626 368 277. If you email or call, please make it very short!

30 Jan 2019 [ Sources: House of Commons Voting Services | Anne Marie Morris MP website ]

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Reader Comments 11

11. Andrew Bates , Friday, February 01, 2019, 00:04:

That the ERG voted for it this time doesn't mean they will vote for whatever comes back. Indeed, JRM sought to confirm that they would get another chance to vote on the WA during the debate. What this does is serves to run the clock down until 13th February. It also gives the PM the chance to (perhaps unwittingly) give the EU a chance to show how intransigent they are.
Come 13th February, the ERG can still vote down the deal that PMTM comes back with and then we have only 2 weeks until they can force a General Election, meaning there will be no bills passed before 29th March and only 6 weeks until we're out.

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