No Brexit deal will ever be as good as a EU membership (Photo: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images)

Last night’s vote was a momentous and ominous defeat for the Government.

This was the prime minister’s flagship policy. It is the very reason she got the job as PM, and what the government has focused on to the exclusion of all else for two and a half years.

Theresa May has lost numerous cabinet members over it, including two Brexit secretaries. And it was defeated on a scale unprecedented for more than a century. Brexit has become a national embarrassment.

The prime minister’s deal was doomed to fail. Her deal is a bad deal for the UK. It pleases no one, and the backstop arrangement would leave us as rule-takers, not rule-makers. Nothing the government negotiates will ever be as good as membership of the European Union.




There are now some who say we should crash out of the EU without a deal on the 29th March.

The only way forward after last night’s defeat is to go back to the public.

How lovely it must be in their charmed lives, applying for their French residency or setting up investment funds in Dublin, while the poorest in our country pay the price for their ideological Brexit. Food shortages, planes grounded, medicine stockpiles – no responsible public servant should even contemplate this catastrophe.

There are also those who think they can magic up a better deal – both on the Labour frontbench and Conservative backbenches. But it is nothing but hubris. They are chasing unicorns, which even my five-year-old could tell them don’t exist.

The only way forward after last night’s defeat is to go back to the public (Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

And what’s worse is that Corbyn is ignoring the vast majority of his colleagues, party members and Labour voters who want a People’s Vote. I have no doubt now that a vote for Labour is a vote for Brexit.

The only way forward after last night’s defeat is to go back to the public.

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Soon after the referendum in 2016, the Liberal Democrats began making the case for a People’s Vote on whatever deal emerged. And I am delighted that so many MPs from all parties have come together to fight for the public’s right to have a say on the final Brexit deal, with the option to stay in the European Union.

At the start of this week, the Liberal Democrats, together with MPs from other parties, tabled the necessary legislation to get us from where we are now to a People’s Vote.

That includes enabling the Electoral Commission to start consulting on the referendum question and providing for a public vote on the deal versus staying in the European Union.

We now know what Brexit really looks like. We now know all of the promises that the Leave campaign has broken. It won’t be the easiest trade deal in human history; it won’t bring £350m a week to our NHS; and it certainly won’t make us better off.

So when we have a People’s Vote, I will be unashamedly making the case for staying in the EU. Because there is no Brexit that protects jobs, looks after our NHS, and gives us security in an uncertain world.

Now we have the detail of what Brexit looks like, it is only fair we go back to the people and give them the opportunity to choose a better future for our country.



Our children and grandchildren deserve the same opportunities that we had growing up. They deserve the chance to study, work and live anywhere they want and the chance to fall in love with whoever they want. We owe it to them to sort out this mess.

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