Brexit: IDS Rages Against ‘Arrogant’ Parliament ‘at Odds’ with British People

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 10: Former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith gives a spe
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Victoria Friedman

Former Conservative Party leader and Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith MP condemned Britain’s “arrogant” Parliament for abusing the sovereignty lent to it by the British people to ram through legislation aimed at stopping Brexit.

Speaking to Sky News’s Adam Boulton on Wednesday morning, Mr Duncan Smith warned that the House of Commons is at odds with the majority of the British people who voted for Brexit because “an overwhelming majority of MPs are mostly people who don’t want to leave.”

“What’s going on right at the moment is putting MPs in utter disrepute,” IDS said, referencing MPs last night voting to extend Article 50 and last week voting in one day for legislation that would stop a no-deal Brexit.

“The other day, we rammed a bill through, we broke precedent, we had about three and a half hours [debate] on one of the biggest constitutional issues and we didn’t even get to third reading,” he said.

“This is a constitutional bill — not where someone is going to die. This is is an utter outrage that Parliament is now behaving in such an arrogant way that Government becomes impossible,” he added.

“Parliament is at odds, now, with the British public. It’s a very dangerous position to be in,” IDS proclaimed.

Stating that he would see his own entire political career as a waste if Brexit does not happen, the MP chastised his fellow lawmakers, asking rhetorically, “Why, in British politics, when 17.4 million people vote clearly to leave the European Union it is a bunch of puffed-politicians who spend their time saying, ‘You know what? We have a different view and we’re going to deny you your say’?”

When Remain-supporting establishment news anchor Adam Boulton tried to affirm that “parliament is sovereign” and therefore has a right to meddle in the British people’s June 2016 directive, Mr Duncan Smith pointed out, “The people are sovereign. They lend their sovereignty to Parliament for a period of [time] and then it is returned to them.

“And when Parliament returns that sovereign choice to the British people, they are sovereign in making that choice. So they told Parliament we are going to leave the EU. There is no point asking them that binding question and then denying them the answer.”

Prime Minister Theresa May is set to meet with the EU27 today to ask for a further Brexit extension, the current extension expiring on April 12th, with the UK originally scheduled to leave on March 29th. A number of media sources have speculated that European leaders may insist on a long delay from either December 2019 to March 2020.

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