ANYONE supporting an EU Membership vs #NoDealBrexit referendum is worse than the MPs who got us into this mess.
You saw the Leave Camp say "Vote our way and you'll get any deal you can imagine" in 2016; you saw them be proven wrong for 3 years & you want to let them do it again.
I used to be in favour of putting No-Deal on the ballot paper. I used to argue that we can't force Brexit-voters into a choice between EU membership and a deal they would see as being strong-armed by the EU. But:
A) That kind of deal is the inevitable outcome of No-Deal anyway.
B) It would go like this:
Me: Every SUCCESSFUL economy has comprehensive trade deals with its neighbours.
The No-Deal camp would immediately say "Don't worry, No-Deal is only temporary".
I.e. The majority of the no-deal campaign would be selling an undefined un-negotiated DEAL!
C) The reason why our country wasn't able to have a proper discussion about Brexit in 2016, and instead just took swings at each other, was because the UK-EU relationship that Brexit would produce hadn't been precisely defined, so it was like fighting on ice.
No-Deal is the same.
D) The main reason why a No-Deal Brexit cannot be on the ballot paper is because there is literally ZERO guarantee (in fact there's bags of evidence to the contrary) that the deal we end up getting, after leaving without one, will be more popular than EU membership.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Can you imagine if, during the years of Brexit renegotiations (2020-24), journalists had grilled the Tories on their manifesto promise to get Brexit done.... as much as they're now grilling Labour on whether they're "taxing working people"?
It shows they CAN do their jobs.
They just chose not to with the Tories.
Look at this.
It's very good journalism by @WilfredFrost, exposing that the Labour manifesto used the technicality of not directly taxing working people, but it still hits them.
"Get Brexit Done" was literally the title of the Tory manifesto and was NEVER challenged like this.
Boris Johnson started renegotiations SIX MONTHS after winning an election on a promise to end the Brexit negotiations.
So there's nothing subjective about the fact that the Tory government was elected on a lie.
Yet NOT ONE news station categorically communicated that fact.