A People’s Vote is becoming a real possibility

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the East Kilbride News.

For a period of time last Thursday afternoon it felt as if the Tory government at Westminster was about to collapse. A toxic atmosphere and a party at war with itself was proving to be a heady, dangerous mix.

Prime Minister Theresa May had just finished taking questions on her European Union Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons when hardline Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg MP held an impromptu press conference outside blasting the whole thing while being heckled by pro-EU protesters.

Letters of no confidence in the PM were being drafted, those of a Remain and Leave persuasion were saying the deal was the worst of all worlds and the public at large were either sick to the back teeth of the whole thing or in a state of blissful ignorance.

Indeed, listening to a football show on Saturday on BBC Radio Scotland, a player from a Premiership club told how a team-mate asked him at training one day last week: What’s Brexit?

He will not be alone. This column has noted before that there will be millions of people across the United Kingdom for whom this is going over their heads.

And for that reason, a no-deal Brexit is not an option. The country is not braced for it never mind the fact that the population should not have to put up with the awful realities of it.

For MPs, it should now be a straight choice of voting for the withdrawal agreement or cancelling Brexit altogether. The EU has already stated that extending Article 50 to buy time is something they do not wish to do.

It is a mess and the longer it goes on, the greater the possibility that there will be a People’s Vote to sort it all out. Colin Paterson