LETTER OF THE WEEK: MPs should hang heads in shame over the Brexit Bill

The Brexit Bill has just been voted on by Parliament.

This bill proposes granting extraordinary powers to government ministers.

They would be able to make up new UK laws, and cancel our rights as they saw fit, and without normal Parliamentary debate or oversight.

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The bill will give the Government powers similar to those used by medieval monarchs, powers that Parliament as a whole normally exercises, not just individual ministers.

And the individual ministers are people such as Boris Johnson, Davis Davis, Liam Fox, and of course, Theresa May.

All of these are people have demonstrated their political incompetence in recent months.

It’s not as if the Conservative government has a solid majority.

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Theresa May made the unbelievably stupid and needless decision to call a General Election. The Government now has to depend on the DUP for a tiny overall majority but this is currently under threat of a legal challenge.

The Government has no mandate from the country to take this undemocratic and retrograde step.

Yet, disgracefully, all Conservative MPs supported this bill.

This is not the first time the Government has tried to deny the sovereignty of Parliament. Last year Theresa May claimed she had the right to trigger Article 50 giving notice to leave the EU.

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She said she did not need Parliamentary authority to do this. But the UK Supreme Court overruled her.

Parliamentary sovereignty was enforced, not by the Conservatives, but as the result of a brave private citizen who brought a case against the Government, and won.

For this, the private citizen received death threats and accusations of being a traitor.

As can readily be seen from the two examples given, this Conservative Government isn’t interested in genuine Parliamentary sovereignty.

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Many Brexit campaigners, including Northamptonshire Conservative MPs, appealed to a sense of patriotism in voters.

There was much talk of returning sovereignty to Parliament from undemocratic EU institutions.

But the real patriots are not MPs who wrap themselves in the Union Jack.Nor are they those urging us to “take back control” and branding as traitors all those who want proper democratic oversight of Brexit.

The real patriots are those men and women who died in the skies over Britain and Germany, on the beaches of France, or in the steaming jungles of the far East, and in many other places.

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They gave their lives to protect real Parliamentary democracy, not the sham currently being foisted on us by the Conservative Government.

Our Conservative MPs should hang their heads in shame.

John Islip

Kettering