Liberal Democrats vote to bin Brexit
The Liberal Democrats will go into the next general election promising to cancel Brexit, after delegates at the party’s annual conference overwhelmingly backed the policy.
Although the party has used the slogan ‘‘Bollocks to Brexit’’, the Lib Dems had previously campaigned only for a second referendum.
The party’s position is still in favour of that but after yesterday’s vote it will pledge that a majority Lib Dem government would revoke the Article 50 exit process without asking voters.
Although the Lib Dems are unlikely to win the next general election, the shift in position is an attempt to outflank Labour as the most overtly pro-Remain party in the campaign.
It is a gamble for Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader, and yesterday she admitted that it was controversial. The pledge to cancel Brexit risks alienating soft Tory Remain voters comfortable with the idea of a second referendum as a democratic way to stay in the EU.
The Lib Dems need to win seats from the Tories as well as from Labour if they want to secure a breakthrough at the next general election. Swinson told The Andrew
Marr Show on BBC One: ‘‘If the Liberal Democrats win a majority at the next election, the ‘Stop Brexit’ party, then stopping Brexit is exactly what people will get . . . I recognise not everyone agrees with the Lib Dems on this [but] it is genuinely what we think is right for the country.’’ Her party had to give voters ‘‘an option for all this Brexit chaos to stop’’.
Sir Ed Davey, the party’s deputy leader defended the policy, saying that victory in a general election would give the Lib Dems a democratic mandate to cancel Brexit. He said that a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum after the election ‘‘would be asking people to vote twice’’. Tom Brake, the party’s Brexit spokesman, said that the policy change to revoke article 50 would ‘‘end the Brexit nightmare’’.
However, Sam Gyimah, the former Conservative leadership candidate who defected to the Lib Dems this weekend, made clear that he was more in favour of the referendum policy. He has long been a high-profile advocate of another Brexit vote.