DAVID Mundell has revealed he will NOT be joining breakaway pro-EU Tories who have left their party for the new Independent Group (TIG) in the Commons.
The Scottish Secretary was speaking in Edinburgh after a speech marking the 20th anniversary of the Scottish Parliament.
He was asked if he would leave the party or the Cabinet if a no-deal Brexit became the Government’s position, and replied: “I’m most certainly not leaving the Conservative Party.
“I’m disappointed that colleagues have chosen to leave.”
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Mundell said he hoped the three Tories who walked out on Wednesday to join eight former Labour MPs in the group would have an opportunity to return at some point.
Asked about reports that he was one of four Cabinet members to tell Theresa May she must agree to delay Brexit by extending Article 50 to avoid a no-deal exit, or lose their support, he said: “I don’t comment on private conversations that I’m having with the Prime Minister.
“But what I have said to her repeatedly is that a no-deal Brexit is a very bad deal for Scotland and the United Kingdom and that we must do everything that we can to avoid that outcome.”
Mundell said SNP assertions that key Brexit legislation was a “power grab”, which could see Scotland lose out on powers returning from Brussels, as “invented grievance” and “complete fantasy”.
However SNP depute leader Keith Brown retorted: “The Tories fought tooth and nail against devolution in the first place – and their attitude has barely changed since. David Mundell is perfectly content with imposing a hard Brexit on Scotland against our will – while making a power grab on areas the Leave campaign pledged would come directly to Holyrood.
“After Theresa May trampled all over David Mundell’s self-declared red lines, if he had any credibility he would have resigned months ago.”
Meanwhile, a leading academic has said the new TIG had correctly diagnosed “the broken politics of a Conservative Party in hock to the hard-core Brexiteers … and of a Labour Party currently controlled by a far-left clique around Jeremy Corbyn”.
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Dr Adrian Pabst, head of the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, said the group was “the wrong answer to the right question”.
He said: The two main parties, which together received over 80% of all votes at the last General Election, are morphing from broad churches into narrow sects, leaving millions of voters politically homeless.”
However, nothing was less certain than their suggestion there was popular support for a pro-EU party combining economic with social liberalism. After the 2008 financial crisis and a decade of austerity, there was growing demand for greater economic justice, including taking on big banks and business, raising wages and nationalising the railways.
He added: “For now, neither of the two big parties is building a cross-class, cross-cultural coalition that can win a majority, and neither Theresa May nor Jeremy Corbyn seem capable of providing a big-tent politics.
“With new leaders and fresh ideas that speak to the needs of disaffected voters, either party has the chance to seize the middle ground. In this manner, the creation of the group could yet bring about a realignment of British politics.”
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