Their votes against today’s measures come risk-free – since, if the Labour leader holds his course, there’s no chance of them being defeated.
He says “our history is the history of freedom”, which includes the freedom to rebel when you think the Government is getting it wrong.
Any move to grab more powers next year is going to end badly for politicians in Brussels.
Thoughtful, polite and Left-of-Centre, he was the Eurosceptic whom federalists found it hardest to dislike.
The agreement that Johnson has obtained rights the wrongs inflicted by Major and a succession of Europhile Prime Ministers.
Johnson should be praised for getting a deal at all – once again. But as matters stand, MPs won’t be able properly to consider it.
Her told a meeting in 1994 that “it has recently been said that the option of leaving the Community [is] ‘unthinkable’. I believe this attitude is rather simplistic.”
I worked for both of them, and they were extraordinary human beings. But they were also both contingent, flawed, and also with their all-too-obvious blind spots.
Had he not founded the European Research Group, we might very well be subject to the Withdrawal Agreement or have never had the chance to vote Leave.
There may be greater willingness by Brussels to negotiate following populist successes in the European elections.
The process is hard and risky, but it still seems unlikely that the Labour Party would really torpedo an agreement in the last resort.
In the third piece in our mini-series evaluating the EEA, our columnist wonders how both sides managed to become so hostile to moderate concepts.
Both the referendum and our eventual departure from the EU were delivered only with decades of legislative trench warfare in the House of Commons.