Thread by @robinthemint

@JohnRentoul I am depressed that a British prime minister would seek to game the system & even contemplate bypassing Parliament or timing a general election to facilitate Brexit by default without asking the people about no deal that was not put in the referendum. It’s shabby & undemocratic.

@JohnRentoul I will find it very hard , as I suspect will many, to accept the legitimacy of the trickery and sharp practice of any Brexit facilitated by the Vote leave Junta who by a coup have seized power of our state. Some sort of democratic vote must take place before we crash out.

@JohnRentoul I am a lawyer, I am a former Parliamentary candidate, a former borough councillor & thus always have had deep personal roots in our democratic system. But what this right-wing Junta is doing is a denial of democracy which must not stand. It’s more important than party politics.

@JohnRentoul It would be a serious mistake in my view to believe crashing out with no Deal without democratic approval is something that the nation as a whole will except with equanimity. It is an affront to democracy to rely upon a three year old referendum result where no deal not on ballot

@JohnRentoul We have to look to Germany in the 1930s as an example of what happens when right-wing figures use referendum results to bypass Parliamentary democracy. Dangerous & should be opposed with everything we have. All of us who prefer Parliamentary democracy to demagoguery.

@JohnRentoul 1945, PM Clement Attlee said ‘I could not consent to the introduction of our national life of a device so alien to all of our traditions as the referendum, which has only too often been the instrument of Nazism & Fascism’

Even in more recent times we have been warned see this:

@JohnRentoul Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher said referendums were a “splendid weapon for demagogues and dictators”.

I submit now it is not the vote that is the problem it is the utilisation of the vote by Johnson to bypass Parliament that proves these warnings by Atlee & Thatcher prescient.

@JohnRentoul We are in the midst of a right-wing coups d’etat under our noses and with the craven complicity of many parliamentarians who are selling our democracy cheap. That referendum result of three years ago has no legitimacy in terms of crashing out on no deal and I will not accept it.

@JohnRentoul @threadreaderapp please unroll

@JohnRentoul The Johnson Junta attempting to portray the struggle as a battle between ‘The people against Parliament” is him setting up an entirely bogus straw man. Parliament is elected by the people to scrutinise the conduct of the executive that Johnson now leads after the vt leave Coup.

@JohnRentoul To return to the original theme this is exactly what was warned by both prime ministers Attlee &Thatcher. Unscrupulous demagogues utilising referenda to justify undemocratic misconduct in the name of the people without the people being able to scrutinise through Parliament.

@JohnRentoul Accept not except.