Thread by @JolyonMaugham

This, by @bernardjenkin, is really poor. It just ignores as inconvenient at least twelve factors, that: (1) MPs voting in the 2015 Referendum Act could have chosen a binding referendum, as with the referendum on AV, but they chose an advisory one;

(2) the choice at (1) left them and not the Government with control over what happened next because leaving the EU would require primary legislation;

(3) during the course of the campaign No Deal was never suggested by Leave to be a possible outcome and one cannot pretend the result in 2016 was a mandate for it;

(4) the campaign was dogged by deliberate lying by Leave - and the evidence shows those lies were believed;

(5) Leave massively and unlawfully overspent - that is what the Divisonal Court found in a JR brought by Good Law Project; (6) factors (3)-(5) are perfectly proper factors for MPs to take into account when deciding what to do with the result;

(7) when MPs voted to notify under A50 in 2016 they did so knowing they could, with permission, revoke if the Government did not deliver to MPs what it had promised; (8) the Government has not delivered what it promised MPs in inducing them to vote to notify;

(9) despite all the propagandising for it with the full force of the State and the Fourth Estate public support for Brexit has fallen as evidence has emerged of the reality - and it cannot any longer be said on the evidence to be the will of the people;

(10) factor (9) is also something MPs can perfectly properly take into account; (11) the EU Withdrawal Act does not explicitly contemplate that we will Leave without a deal; (12) MPs have three times explicitly voted to reject No Deal.

If @bernardjenkin wants to persuade rather than browbeat he really ought to respond to these dozen points.

The ball's in your court, Sir Bernard.

Snip from: on.ft.com/2UhDILW.