As the dust settles after another hugely important couple of nights in Westminster, there are some who have sadly sought to issue recriminations about those Brexit-supporting MPs – most of 75 Conservatives and the 10 DUP MPs – who did not support the Withdrawal Agreement on Tuesday. I am one of those MPs, and I think it’s really important to make something clear. The proposed Withdrawal Agreement that has twice been put before Parliament (and twice rejected by historic margins) is not merely a ‘bad deal’, it is simply not Brexit. I don’t think many in Westminster are more passionate about delivering Brexit than I am. But Brexit meant one thing above all others: taking back control. The deal that was on offer to us on Tuesday – with its wholly unnecessary ‘Backstop’ – was not, even on the most generous reading, ‘taking back control’. It would have handed Brussels 100% control of our trade and customs policy and precluded the UK’s right to sign trade deals with the rest of the world. Worse, when the EU signed a trade agreement with another country (for example, China), we would have been compelled to make all the concessions agreed to by the EU, but China would only have needed to offer its concessions to the EU 27, not to the UK. In other words, we would have become the EU’s expendable bargaining chip in negotiations. Meanwhile, the Agreement would have stripped Northern Ireland of the ability to control and decide its own constitutional status – a right enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement. Northern Ireland would have been treated separately to the rest of the UK, and become a rule-taker in areas such as goods, agricultural products and VAT. As confirmed by HMRC, this regulatory divergence would have required the introduction of paperwork for those who wanted to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. This went against express promises made by the Government that such a thing would never happen. To top it all, the UK would have been unable to leave this humiliating state of affairs without the EU’s permission – a situation completely unprecedented in international law. Far from taking back control, the Agreement would have diminished our country to a state of unending ‘vassalage’. This was the bottom line of the Attorney General’s damning legal advice – an opinion echoed by many prominent international lawyers, including Professor Phillipe Sands, Martin Howe QC, and Lord Anderson QC. It was surprising, therefore, to hear the accusation that those of us repudiating such an agreement were ‘risking losing Brexit altogether’, and will somehow be held responsible if the Government, Parliament and EU subsequently conspired to keep us in the EU. We need to be crystal clear: the only people who would be responsible for ‘no Brexit’ would be those who vote to take no deal off the table, or to extend – for no good reason – Article 50. The vast majority of Parliament voted to trigger Article 50 in full knowledge of its significance: that we would – in both domestic and international law – be leaving the EU on 29 March 2019 with or without a deal. They also stood of manifestos reiterating the same promise. If some individuals now regret those decisions, so be it – but they ought to look the electorate in the eye and admit that, rather than hunting around for Brexiteers onto whom to deflect the blame. As the final acts of this drama unfold, I will vote for a good deal, if one can be secured, for the Malthouse Compromise, if this can be delivered, and if needs be for leaving without a deal. But I will not let down my conscience, my constituents or my country by voting for a deal that doesn’t deliver Brexit at all.