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Everyone, subject to exceptions not applicable here, has a right to stand for Parliament. But nobody has a right to be the adopted candidate of a specific party. That Party’s members, activists and leaders must be willing to adopt and support the candidate concerned.
If an MP cannot support the Conservative Prime Minister or the Conservative government in continuing to control the agenda in the House of Commons, then he or she can’t stand as a Conservative candidate in the next election.
All of these MPs voted to leave when they voted for Article 50. Not to leave this way or that way but to leave. Article 50 is clear. If you have a deal you leave with one. If you don’t, you leave without one. It’s there in the article.
Comparisons with rebels under May don’t stand up, as voting against a policy is a different thing to seeking to seize the agenda from government and handing it to others.
It not only gives that control to the opposition but the bill they want would take whatever extensions the EU says. We would then have NO negotiating position.
The EU would think, why do I have to negotiate with you? This effectively keeps you in, keeps you paying, keeps you subject to EU laws, and you can’t stop me thanks to your Parliament.
The Conservative manifesto on which our MPs stood at the last election said that “no deal is better than a bad deal”. MPs dishonest enough to not only abandon that but actively oppose their own government attempting to realise it should hardly be trusted with candidacy again.
That this is seen as even remotely controversial shows how weak discipline has become in recent times, and why restoring it is a salutary outcome devoutly to be wished.
