What was Cleggy doing whispering on the front bench

What was Cleggy doing whispering on the front bench

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Nick Clegg was sitting on the Labour front bench in the Commons yesterday lunchtime. A defection? No. Former Lib Dem leader Clegg had gone there for a brief chat with Labour’s Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer.

Sir Keir is An Acceptable Person. Much in the way that, say, certain brands of lavatory brush meet EU specifications, bristly-haired Sir Keir is Approved by liberal (and therefore good) people.

This house-trained, kitemarked, Brussels-compliant lawyer lives in north London and is not one of those frightening working-class agitators. Given the rumours about a new party for posh Centre-Lefties, who knows what Mr Clegg was saying to Sir Keir yesterday?





Their conversation may have been an innocent swapping of note about the Government’s Great Repeal Bill, which had its White Paper launched mid-morning. But the Clegg-Starmer pow-wow may equally have been an inquiry about Sir Keir’s social availability over the two-week parliamentary Easter recess, beginning today. Disenchanted metropolitan Lefties, were they so disposed, could use this fortnight to plot, SDP-style, over their supper tables. Senora Clegg, celebrated cook and castanet clacker, may be busy with her paella pot.

Plans for the Great Repeal Bill were explained by Brexit Secretary David Davis. It is not being called quite that, mind you. Hansard is referring to it as the ‘great repeal Bill’. Note the precise use of capital letters, which is significant. And Mr Davis’s statement was entitled ‘Legislating for UK Withdrawal from the EU’.

Westminster clerks are baulking at bestowing the grandiose ‘Great Repeal Bill’ title on what may, in practice, be little more than a bureaucratic reclassification. Clerks mistrust fancy names; they instinctively dislike flashiness. Too vulgar.



Under Mr Davis’s plan, current EU-related laws will be stretched into the post-Brexit era until, if need be, they are later altered or dumped by our politicians. Mr Davis said this would bring contractual certainty and ensure that there was no legal vacuum the instant we are out of Brussels’ clutches. The big principle, though, was that these laws would now be in the gift of the sovereign House of Commons rather than Eurocrats.

John Redwood (Con, Wokingham) said it should be called the ‘Continuity Bill’. Anna Soubry (Con, Broxtowe) thought the ‘Great Transfer Bill’ would be better. Mark Durkan (SDLP, Foyle) suggested the ‘Download and Save until Deleted Bill’.



Julian Lewis (Con, New Forest E) thought no one could reasonably oppose the Bill. After all, Brexiteers would see it was a quick and sensible way of cracking on to full departure from the EU while giving businesses certainty.

And Remainers would be glad that EU directives were being perpetuated, at least for a while. Mr Lewis made his point fully aware, I am sure, that some Remainers will never support anything this Government suggests about Europe. Sir Keir was lowish-key in his response to Mr Davis. He voiced a few furry fears about human rights but Mr Davis, who is skilfully consensual at the despatch box, pretty much agreed with him. It was noticeable that Sir Keir’s response was markedly less bitter than that of Mr Clegg and other arch-Remainers. Mr Clegg ladled sarcastic praise over Mr Davis and claimed that EU data protection laws would still rule our lives.



Mr Davis diplomatically told him he was overstating his case.

Barry Sheerman (Lab, Huddersfield) moaned about ‘the secret agenda of the barmy-army Eurosceptics’ on the Tory backbenches. The SNP’s Stephen Gethins hyperventilated (de rigueur for a Scots Nat) with some slogans about how ‘we’re turning the clock back 40 years’.

Chris Leslie (Lab, Nottingham E) had some complaint about the Government’s ‘squalid negotiating tactics’. Not even Mr Leslie really looked as though he believed this and all three men merely sounded determined to be grumpy.

Though the likes of Clegg and Tony Blair proclaim their Centrism, they can not see that they are less Centrist about Brexit than Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party.

Sir Keir Starmer, the official Brexit shadow, is markedly more reasonable than the manic Lib Dems.