Deal vote is needed

Theresa May’s war-like rhetoric (she is going to battle in Brussels) is misleading.

Resistance to her deal has come from across Parliament, including the Conservative Party ranks and the DUP.

Those who do not support a no-deal Brexit, or any Brexit, are not traitors. Stockpiling and the other no-deal Brexit preparations are a waste of money.

The damage inflicted by Brexit on our economy (GDP is growing less than expected) is real and Nissan’s decision not to build the new X-Trail car in Sunderland is just an example.

Having told us for months that her deal was the only possible deal, the Prime Minister now pretends that the backstop can be radically changed.

The problem is that while she entered the negotiations with multiple unbreachable red lines, the backstop has been the only EU red line intended to protect the peace agreement in Northern Ireland, something we should also care about.

The Conservative Party is leading us towards a no-deal Brexit with empty shelves, shortages of medicines and a significant impact on the economy.

This is wholly unjustified as there is nothing we are going to gain from Brexit.

We are not going to take back control, we are going to have less: to have impact on the world stage we need to work with our friends in the EU.

The 350 million a week for the NHS was a false claim: it costs more to leave the EU. Turkey was not about to join the EU, and if we want to reduce the number of asylum-seekers fleeing the Syrian conflict it is best done if we work with the EU.

The referendum in 2016 was a blind vote, in which no alternative to the EU membership was specified.

A referendum on the final detailed Brexit deal, with remaining in the EU as the alternative, is the only way to settle this matter, whatever is the outcome.

As the Brexiteer David Davis said in 2002, when discussing a possible referendum on regional assemblies: “referendums should be held when people know exactly what they are getting … we should not ask people to vote on a blank sheet and tell them to trust us to fill in the details afterwards”.

Giuseppe Enrico Bignardi