Catherine Rowett, the Green Party MEP for the East of England has today condemned the EU Withdrawal Bill, which MPs passed in the House of Commons earlier.
“Since the referendum of 2016, we have ridden a rollercoaster, lurching from pessimism to optimism and back. There were moments of hope, and moments of despair, but nothing reached the depths of the horror that I felt on the morning of Friday 13th December. It was a different kind of anxiety, and we can now see, in the hard-line Withdrawal Agreement Bill outlined by Johnson today, why we were right to feel fear.
“With the environmental protections and guarantees of workers’ rights stripped out, the Brexit project is being revealed for what it was always really meant to be: the beginning of an economic race to the bottom and the transfer of wealth from those who work to those who take the proceeds of their efforts. Profit for the privileged will be prioritised over even minimal standards of welfare for the vulnerable, and over policies for nature. Meanwhile the removal of child-refugee protections should strike chill into our hearts this Christmas season.
“How long will it be before the reality of this withdrawal bill dawns on those who think that it will be helpful if we just get Brexit done, and that it will be best done under a ruthless prime minister, whose lack of any scruples would have the advantage that nothing will get in the way or delay the process? How long will it be before those people too begin to pine for the old days, when the UK had nothing nastier to complain about than the EU, and its benign shared commitments to fairness, equality and care for the environment.”