A recent Radio Five Live Brexit debate featured the usual slogans – ‘will of the people’, ‘EU superstate’, ‘Project Fear’ – but the most startling statement came from one of the pro-Leave participants regarding a People’s Vote.
He said: ‘If you do not deliver what the people want with Brexit, you will see a rise of far-right extremism across the country, I can guarantee it, and I do not want to see that.’
I tried to get my mind around what I had just heard. Did he mean that we must leave the EU to prevent social unrest and violence? How does this square with a democracy? Are those who wish us to leave the EU, under any circumstances, now being driven by their own fear?
Surely, the only way to step back from this bizarre scenario is to prove that those on the far-right are actually a minority in our country and have no legitimacy. Giving the UK a vote on the reality of leaving the EU in 2019 is the only way I can see of putting this to the test.
David Collins, Northumberland
Isn’t it convenient that those who don’t want a People’s Vote because they know they will lose it seem to agree that there will be civil unrest if it overturns Brexit?
Where was the civil unrest from the disenfranchised 16- and 17-year-olds after the last referendum?
We are down to the Brexiteers’ last few throws of the dice now, but this is both desperate and dangerous stuff.
Mike George, Warrington
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