Once again, politics, our Parliament, the countries of these islands, have been forced to the edge of a precipice by one of the most irresponsible, reckless Governments that we've ever seen. A decision, which, I think we all accept, is one of the most momentous that any Parliament will have made in generations is going to be forced through in a matter of days. A Bill, running at over 100 pages, published overnight, no impact assessment—and instead of politics proceeding through cool reflection, effective scrutiny, what we're having is politics working through bitter argument and through threats.

The latest threat, of course, is that, 'If you don't vote for our timetable then we'll pull the whole Bill and we'll denounce you as enemies of the people'. That's the spirit, unfortunately, in which this Conservative Government have approached this issue, certainly since the current Prime Minister has taken over. It's completely unacceptable. How has it got to this? Basically, the Tory party has been taken over by the extreme right wing of its party. And surely—. Paul Davies, you know better than this in your heart of hearts. You've acquiesced. How is it—[Interruption.] We've ended up in a position—[Interruption.] We've ended up in a position, right, where the mandate from the 2016 referendum has been taken as a mandate for the most extreme, hardest of all Brexits. They even call themselves 'the Spartans' without a hint of irony—some phalanx of people who think that politics is war conducted by other means. Let’s remember this, it didn't end well for the Spartans, by the way—they ended up internally polarised, externally marginalised, and they ended up having to rejoin the Achaean league that they had left. There’s a moral lesson there for you, look.

It could have been and it should have been different, right? There was the opportunity for compromise here. Despite the fact that we are passionately a pro-remain party, we were prepared to compromise. We supported the infinitely better option of a single market membership and customs union. In fact, we will support an amendment today at Westminster on that basis. But, no, what happened is that the Conservative Government took us further and further to the extreme, right-wing fringes of this argument, and indeed its party.

I must admit, I was surprised by Mr Johnson coming back with a deal, because I did not expect even him to actually be guilty of one of the greatest acts of political treachery and dishonesty that I have ever seen—and I use my words advisedly. As the First Minister has said, this is a man who went to the DUP conference and said in terms that no British Conservative Government could or should sign up to a regulatory and customs border in the Irish sea, and that is precisely what he has done. There are echos here, aren’t there, of the grandfather of Ulster unionism, Edward Carson, in 1921 saying,

'What a fool I was! I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power.'

It was ever thus. And there’s a lesson here for us in Wales as well: this man is not a man that can be trusted. What he has done to the DUP he will do to us as well. Don't trust his words.

Look at the political declaration—the latest version of it—it’s full of qualified language: 'should' not 'will'. Therein lies the—. There are no binding commitments there at all. Section 79 talks about 'the level playing field'. The most ambiguous phrase possible: 'building upon'. We all know 'building upon'—it actually is no basis to believe anything. We will end up in the extreme hard Brexit. The direction of travel is absolutely clear.

We can't accept this. This is no way to run a country. This is certainly no way to ruin ours. We have to do our job and stand up to the Conservative Party. It’s a shame that the Conservative Party is not prepared to do that themselves. How can we actually assess this without even the transparency of an economic impact? We will end up in a position where Wallonia will have more power over the future direction of our economy than we do in Wales. That's what's being served up to us. I have to say, look, the only way to resolve this, because of the vacuum of leadership that is Conservative Party now, is to take it back to the people so that they can have the final say.