Dominic Grieve interview in the Times
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dominic-grieve-putin-wants-division-and-brexiteers-are-at-risk-of-being-his-useful-idiots-bzkcx0bjt?shareToken=770a94d6cd107db8df70c99f16317429
Dominic Grieve: Putin wants division, and Brexiteers are at risk of being his useful idiots
The Conservative MP has fears about leaving the EU but says he is no rebel
This is not paywalled.
Dominic Grieve is perplexed. “It’s rather extraordinary finding oneself called a rebel and a mutineer,” says the mild-mannered former attorney-general. He has never thought of himself as a disrupter. “I’m a conciliator,” he says. He wasn’t head boy but he was always well behaved at school and was at Oxford with Theresa May before studying for the bar. He doesn’t tweet or use Facebook, he drinks his tea out of a cup, has a Union flag in his immaculate office, rugs on the floor and finds Silk too racy, preferring Rumpole of the Bailey. “I’m an establishment figure,” he explains before apologising profusely for his cold, which he says he must have caught from Steve Baker, the Brexit minister.
And
“The belief that we are trying to destroy Brexit or put a spanner in the works is just not correct,” Mr Grieve, 61, says. “We all regret Brexit and think it is a mistake but with the possible exception of Ken Clarke we are not trying to kill off Brexit. So I am not sure what we are meant to be mutinying over.” The former minister insists that all he is trying to do is improve the bill. “We are objecting to attempts to characterise this piece of legislation as some kind of loyalty test. It’s a process bill, it is quite techy, incomprehensible to most people. I suspect if we don’t get it into a reasonable order the Lords will rewrite it.” Most of his fellow rebels have legal backgrounds. “We have tended to look at this with a lawyer’s eye,” he says. “We aren’t querying everything, I want to avoid rebellion.”