Second vote could spark a revolving door to the polls
PROBABLY the only relevant question to ask about a second Brexit referendum is: How would you vote in the fourth one?
Once you are into the territory of re-runs, why stop at two and shouldn’t people be careful what they wish for?
What if the answer on the second asking is, “Which part of the word ‘leave’ didn’t you understand the first time?”
The People’s Vote, pushing for a second go at rejecting Brexit, are arguing for something quite different, they will tell you.
They want to give the people a say on the outcome of tortuous Brexit negotiations which restarted this week with the prospects of a mutually acceptable outcome diminishing as the clock runs down.
Either one side blinks and is humiliated, or someone creates a magical solution to invisibly patrol the Irish border, or we crash out with a disastrous no deal and wait for an economic implosion that surely follows.
Of course, in the long-term, and Jacob Rees-Mogg reckons that is 50 years, the benefits of Britain going it alone would be apparent. That’s OK for his inheritance-funded brood but not for many of the next generation.
The right of the Tory party base their chances of success on cavalier opportunism if, and when, Theresa May is broken on the wheel.
The Labour left are the same, hoping for revolution to rise out of the ashes and carry Jeremy Corbyn to Downing Street.
The SNP hope the “I’m a Scot, get me out of here” card will play in the mayhem of a “no-deal deal”, as leaving on World Trade Terms is now referred to. Will that be enough to inch independence over 50 per cent?
But that would take Scotland into re-run territory, too. Opportunism isn’t enough in a country crying out for leadership. ● LIKE others, I’m bemused by the SNP setting up their own fact-checking agency to correct the spin of modern-day politics and fake news.
Maybe the unit could start by fact-checking SNP Government plans to redefine fuel poverty, the measure of how many people need to use more than 10 per cent of their household income to heat their homes adequately?
The Fuel Poverty (Target, Definition and Strategy) Bill will set out a new measure of fuel poverty. I’m told it could see figures in the Western Isles fall from 56 per cent of households to nearer 20 per cent.
Brilliant. The Government solves fuel poverty by changing the inconvenient facts. I assume this is what SNP ministers running the party service mean by “fact-checking”.