SOCIALISTS committed to leaving the EU met in central London today to discuss how to defend the referendum result from pressure for a second referendum or a reversal of Article 50.

Opening the meeting, Harvard professor of government Richard Tuck said that “democracy is socialism and socialism is democracy.”

He decried the way opponents of the EU have been hounded in academia, saying that if he had worked at a British university he wasn’t sure he would have had the courage to campaign on the anti-democratic character of the EU in the face of “institutional hostility.”

“The central feature of the EU is its design around a strong constitutional structure, placing huge constraints on policy-making in all member states,” he said.

He also slammed the “misleading deal or no deal rhetoric,” saying the reality was closer to “deal now on May’s terms, or deals later” in various different areas.

Members of Labour Leave, the Full Brexit, People’s Brexit, the Communist Party and other groups looked at how to “support each other in promoting our common position” that leaving the EU could be the spark for a major democratic revival in Britain, re-empowering local democracy and looking at further constitutional changes such as abolishing the House of Lords.