Cable plotting Lords ‘revolt’ to sabotage Brexit

SIR Vince Cable yesterday pledged to orchestrate a House of Lords ‘revolt’ to undermine critical Brexit legislation.

The Liberal Democrat leader said his party’s 100 peers would join forces with anti-Brexit Labour peers such as Lord Adonis over the EU Withdrawal Bill.

In an interview, Sir Vince also batted off claims that his leadership was lacklustre, amid rumblings of discontent among senior Lib Dem figures and the departures of several key HQ staff.

According to a recent poll, the party is currently attracting just 7 per cent of voters. But Sir Vince, 74, said it was ‘premature’ to write him off.

On Brexit, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there should be a second referendum that would allow the public to choose an ‘exit from Brexit’.

But last night he was accused of a ‘outrageous’ attempt to undermine the referendum result. Tory MP Chris Philp said: ‘For unelected Lib Dem peers and people like Lord Adonis to try to revolt against the democratically expressed views of the British people would be shocking and outrageous.

‘I’m sure the vast majority of peers will not be tempted to overturn the result of the referendum which the Lib Dems and Lord Adonis are clearly trying to do.’

Last week Lord Adonis resigned as the Government’s infrastructure tsar with a bitter diatribe against Brexit and Theresa May.

Yesterday Sir Vince failed to distance himself from Lord Adonis’s claim in his resignation letter that the referendum result represented a ‘populist and nationalist

‘Shocking and outrageous’

spasm’. The Lib Dem leader said: ‘There’s an element of that. My party has been very clear and consistent and actually different from Labour and the Tories, which are working towards a hard Brexit with taking us out of the customs union and single market. If, as seems likely, we end up in a bad place with the negotiations we want to have an opportunity to stop it and for the public to have a vote on the final outcome.

‘Certainly I and my Lib Dem colleagues did oppose this [the EU Withdrawal Bill] relentlessly as it passed through Parliament. We will be doing [so] as it passes through the House of Lords and hopefully working with Lord Adonis and some of his colleagues.’

Sir Vince complained that not enough Labour MPs voted against the Bill in the Commons.

‘I hope there is a larger revolt when we get into the Lords and Lord Adonis is part of it,’ he said. ‘I’m not a fan of referendums for making complex decisions.

‘The fact is the Brexit process was started through a popular vote and it seems only right and probably the only way forward that when we get to the end product, when we see what the outcome is, that the public are given a choice. Do you want to continue or do you want an exit from Brexit?’

On why the Lib Dems were not doing better in the polls, Sir Vince said the next election was still up to four and a half years away.

He insisted ‘ morale is high’ despite the departures of both its director of communications and the head of press in recent weeks.