25-30 per cent of voters who subscribe to strong Brexiteer world views but he doesn’t speak for the rest.
There is a danger that in all the focus on “no deal”, any deal suddenly becomes acceptable when the
research shows that any form of Brexit will harm the economy. It is not inconceivable that Johnson will at
some point pivot to leaving with a deal (though I doubt his Vote Leave minders will let him).
On the other side of the argument, there are important cross-party efforts afoot to work together and use all
the tools at parliament’s disposal to stop no deal. We Liberal Democrats are very involved in all of this.
However, anti no-deal efforts cannot hide real ongoing challenges in the two main parties.
For all the claims that Labour is a Remain party and is committed to a people’s vote in certain prescribed
circumstances, they are led by a Brexiteer – Jeremy Corbyn – and at least 25 Labour MPs refuse to back it.
They have formed an alliance with most of the Tory benches that have stopped the people getting the final
say on Brexit and this will not change.
Labour’s policy, if it were to take office in October, is still to negotiate an alternative deal to allow for the
UK’s departure from the EU. It is good to see talk of Philip Hammond, the former Tory chancellor, joining
efforts to stop no deal but he and other soft Brexiteers on his benches still favour facilitating Brexit with
some kind of deal.
This is why if there is an election this autumn and there are to be Remain alliance arrangements – like that
between my party, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru in Brecon and Radnorshire – it cannot include
candidates from the two main parties because their parties are not unequivocally committed to a people’s
vote and, most importantly, to remaining in the EU. My advice to them would be to join a proper Remain
party – the Liberal Democrats are the one party that can get into government which is committed to
stopping Brexit altogether.