Boston and Skegness MP says he will vote to keep a no-deal Brexit as an option

This evening, MPs will debate whether the UK should leave the EU on March 29 with no deal (another debate is planned for whether to delay the Brexit process by extending article 50).

It follows the latest failure by the Government to present to the House of Commons terms for the UK’s departure from the European Union which a majority of members support.

In a statement published on his Facebook page this afternoon, Mr Warman said: “Last night I voted to leave the European Union with the Prime Minister’s deal, because it is via this route that Parliament can secure the Brexit that my constituents in Boston and Skegness voted for overwhelmingly.

“For reasons I find utterly incomprehensible, people who have wanted to leave the EU for decades and those who want to block Brexit united to defeat the Government. They can’t both be right to say that doing so will achieve their aims.”

He stresses to constituents that he is ‘totally committed to leaving the EU’, but says ‘the wind is now in the sails of those who are not’.

He said: “I don’t believe ardent Brexiteers will get a harder Brexit than that on offer by voting against the Prime Ministers’s deal – they jeopardise the whole project and thereby democracy itself. Voting against the deal is not a reliable mechanism to get a better one. Wishful thinking is not a policy. Parliament will in all likelihood block a no-deal exit, meaning the deal voted down last night will get softer or Brexit might be blocked altogether.

“I am not one of those who says a no deal, or WTO, exit will be ‘fine’. It won’t. It will be unnecessarily disruptive, even if in the long term Britain is more than strong enough to weather it.

“However, as I’ve said before, Britain should not be afraid of no deal, and it is preferable to no Brexit because democracy outranks all other concerns.

“In Boston and Skegness, people saw all the horror stories the Remain campaign propagated in the 2016 referendum and 76% voted to leave the EU - that was out of both hope, and frustration with politicians who acted like they knew better and didn’t care that people didn’t believe them. Today they deserve a parliament that gives the people what they voted for.”

He goes on to say that ‘endless delay is an embarrassment to all of us’.

“To those who say people didn’t vote in 2016 to be poorer, I say simply that making this all about economics is why Remain lost,” he said. “Parliament has utterly failed to learn from previous mistakes.

“I will vote to leave the EU without a deal if that is what is required to get us out, and because keeping no deal on the table is an essential part of our negotiation strategy. I will not vote for any kind of extension (unless a deal is done and voted for and requires a minimal technical extension to pass the required legislation).”

He concluded: “In a depressing admission of our collective failure, I suspect Parliament will vote for the opposite on both fronts. For that I can only apologise. I will, of course, do all I can to secure the outcome my constituents voted for. The Prime Minister has made today’s motion a free vote, but I fully appreciate that others may not be, and am prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure we deliver Brexit.”