PM’s no to second vote
PRIME Minister Theresa May overnight was to warn MPs against supporting a second referendum, saying it would do “irreparable damage” to British politics.
“Let us not break faith with the British people by trying to stage another referendum,” Mrs May was expected to tell parliament, according to extracts from her speech released by Downing Street.
“Another vote … would do irreparable damage to the integrity of our politics,” she was to say, adding a second vote “would likely leave us no further forward”.
Mrs May was to say another referendum would also “further divide our country at the very moment we should be working to unite it”.
Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum in 2016 and is set to leave on March 29, although she is struggling to get parliament to accept a divorce agree- ment she struck last month.
She has faced calls for a second referendum to resolve the impasse but has argued this would betray the 2016 result and undermine public confidence in politics.
Campaigners for a referendum said the comments showed the idea was being taken seriously.
“A new public vote would be different from the referendum in 2016 because we now know more about what Brexit means,” said Margaret Beckett, a Labour MP and “People’s Vote” supporter.
“Any effort to force Brexit over the line without checking that it has the continued consent of the British people will only reinforce divisions.”
Dozens of MPs support a second referendum, as do former prime ministers John Major and Tony Blair.
Mrs May has delayed a crucial vote by MPs on the draft Brexit deal until next month.
If parliament fails to approve the text, Britain will crash out of the European Union regardless.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit campaigner, said anyone considering a second referendum was “out of their minds”.
“A second referendum would provoke instant, deep and ineradicable feelings of betrayal,” Mr Johnson wrote on Monday in his weekly column in The Daily Telegraph.
AFP