There are lots of things that I would have much preferred in Mrs May's approach. Everybody knows in this Chamber how pro-Europe I am, and I am very discomforted. I think the long-term constitutional challenges we face to keep the union together are much tougher than they would have been had we remained in the union, and, having been a former deputy director of the Welsh Centre for International Affairs and the Unicef officer in Wales, these are matters that do disturb me. However, I think it would be much better if the Welsh Government had accepted this LCM and supported it, and then said to the UK Government, as it did last year, when it repealed the continuity Bill or the Act—well, it may have become an Act, but, anyway, it in the end repealed it—and used its leverage to achieve long-term objectives that would strengthen the British union post Brexit. Because you do have leverage compared to the Scottish Government, which obviously is on a very different course, with an ultimate objective to secede from the United Kingdom. And, on that score, you'd get a lot of support, as you have had, from these benches on such matters as stronger inter-governmental relations, much more formalised, on your rights on future trade agreements—it's not in this withdrawal agreement we should be looking for that, but in future it is a really important issue—and over common frameworks and their governance. That's where you should have been going. That's where you should have been using your political leverage. Instead, you are playing to what you see is the remain gallery that still is out there, and I think that that's a misjudgment.

I do thank you, Presiding Officer, for your indulgence.