Vote Leave Sovereignty Hypocrisy

Those arguing that Britain should leave the European Union tell anyone who will listen that they believe Parliament - the one in Westminster - should be supreme. It’s about regaining our sovereignty, restoring the supremacy of Parliament, and that is what the rotten foreigners in Brussels and elsewhere are said to have taken away from us. So Parliament is something to be not only celebrated, but also respected.

This is central to the message coming from all the Outers, whether it’s Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his fellow saloon bar propper-uppers at UKIP, or the Out tendency in the Tory Party, exemplified by the Vote Leave movement and luminaries such as Michael “Oiky” Gove and his pal Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, now, to the relief of many in the capital, no longer Mayor of London.

However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, respecting the will of Parliament, while it suits Vote Leave when laying into those ghastly types who eat funny food and refuse to speak English, is something they find rather difficult to do themselves. I’ll go further: Vote Leave has been conspicuously flouting the will of Parliament for some weeks now, and has been doing it very deliberately.

The Parliamentary authority that is being flouted is that of Tory MP Andrew Tyrie and the Treasury Select Committee, which has invited two of Vote Leave’s principals to testify before it, and with rather mixed results. First to appear was Dominic Cummings, formerly chief polecat to “Oiky” Gove at the Department for Education, who was merely abusive and dismissive. But he did at least turn up when asked.

But when it was the turn of Cummings’ co-conspirator Matthew “Gromit” Elliott, that respect for Parliamentary sovereignty vanished altogether. When Tyrie asked that he make himself available, Elliott first piled off to Switzerland, and then was merely “busy”, suggesting that Tyrie’s committee go and ask Nigel Lawson instead. Having failed to appear on three occasions, Elliott was forcibly summoned by Tyrie.

In this, he became the first witness that Tyrie had found it necessary to summon in his six years chairing his committee. It got worse: when Elliott was caused to turn up, he showed no sign of contrition or apology, and indeed sat there smirking at Tyrie. He was given several opportunities to agree that he had “mucked about” the committee, yet he failed to avail himself of any of them. And it got worse still.

When Tyrie invited Bozza to testify before the committee, he not only caught Johnson misleading them - that is the nice way of saying he lied - but for former London Mayor then tried to flannel his way out of it. The disrespect held by Vote Leave and its luminaries is clear and obvious. Yet there they all are, telling us that we should show Parliament the respect that they can’t be bothered to show themselves.

And then they wonder why they have a credibility problem. No change there, then.