May’s plea for unity falls on deaf ears

THERESA May’s unifying plea for an end to the divisions over Brexit was last night hit by a vicious backlash from Remain supporters.

The Prime Minister is to urge anti-Brexit voters to ‘respect the legitimacy’ of the referendum in a major speech at Lancaster House in London tomorrow.

She will also say people who backed the Leave side have a ‘responsibility to act magnanimously’.

Mrs May will call for ‘an end to the division and the language associated with it – Leaver and Remainer and all the accompanying insults – and unite to make a success of Brexit and build a truly global Britain’.

But yesterday former Remain campaigners continued their bitter attack on the suggestion Britain will leave the EU single market. They have argued that Britain should stay inside, even though it would mean continued free movement of migrants and accepting rulings from the European Court of Justice.

Joe Carberry, co-executive director of Open Britain, the successor organisation to the official Remain campaign, wrote on Twitter: ‘May prepares to impale the economy based on a mandate that doesn’t exist.’

Former education secretary Nicky Morgan leapt upon the findings of one opinion poll that suggested a narrow majority of Leave voters would object to controls on immigration if it cost them financially.

She said: ‘The Government will be doing a disservice to the country... if it dogmatically pursues a hard, destructive Brexit where immigration control is the be-all-and-endall, our economy is undermined and people are left poorer.’

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron told the BBC’s Sunday Politics that his party will vote against the triggering of Article 50 – to begin the two-year process of leaving the EU – unless there is a second referendum to give the people a final say on the Brexit deal.

He said heading for a ‘hard Brexit’ – in which the UK would be outside of the single market and the customs union – was not on the ballot paper in last June’s EU referendum, and accused the Prime Minister of adopting ‘the Nigel Farage vision’ of Brexit.

Last month Nicola Sturgeon said an independence referendum is ‘on the table’ if Scotland cannot stay in the single market.

Yesterday, the First Minister said on Twitter: ‘Looking like Brexit will mean low tax, de-regulated race to the bottom, with workers’ rights, environmental protection etc under threat.

‘If that is the case, it raises a more fundamental question – not just are we in/out EU, but what kind of country do we want to be?’

SNP Europe spokesman Stephen Gethins pointed to Chancellor Philip Hammond admitting to a German newspaper a hard Brexit could lead to ‘economic damage’.

He said: ‘We have it in black and white from the Chancellor – a Tory hard Brexit means 80,000 Scottish jobs lost, worse living standards and an erosion of employment rights.’