How to Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again) by Nick Clegg

Author:Nick Clegg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

How you can stop Brexit

AS THEY BOWED down before a seemingly invincible Theresa May when she succeeded David Cameron as Prime Minister, Conservative MPs – including those who had campaigned to keep Britain in the European Union – swore an oath of allegiance. ‘We are all Brexiteers now,’ they chanted.

We aren’t, though, are we? For millions of people across the country, such a Damascene conversion did not take place on the morning after the referendum. In fact for millions of voters, especially as they see the facts accumulate against Brexit, the opposite is happening.

This book has sought to explain why it is right for the country to change its decision to leave the European Union, and why developments in Europe make it easier to do so than is widely believed. So as you walk the high streets of Britain, enjoy a pint in your local pub or take your daily commute to work, listen in to conversations and ask people what they are thinking. You will find that they are not, by any measure, all Brexiteers now. The words you are far more likely to hear today, whispered at first, but growing ever louder, go something like this: ‘Brexit is turning out to be much harder than they said it would be. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all.’ The mood is turning.

You can also hear the Brexiteers getting jittery. ‘All these excitable people going on the TV better wake up to the fact that [Brexit] has to be delivered,’ Conservative MP and leading Brexiteer Owen Paterson has complained. ‘If it’s not delivered, there will be the most terrible damage to the integrity of the political establishment.’79 There you have it: the voice of the new Brexit elite worrying about the impact on the political establishment. Surely he, and everyone else, should be more worried about the damage being done to our country than to the reputation of the establishment?

It’s time to set aside our peculiar combination of British fatalism and pride – this fear that nothing can be done about it now, the ship has sailed, and publicly admitting we were wrong would be a mistake. Surely there is no greater mistake than ploughing ahead with a course of action that makes less and less sense by the day?

So what happens next? Who can change the course of Brexit? You can. By deploying pressure, argument and passion, you can change the direction of our country. But to do so, you first need to change the approach taken by an all-important group of people: MPs. Theresa May has promised MPs a vote on the deal, once talks have concluded in October 2018. As I shall explain in more detail below, Parliament therefore has the power to halt the government’s approach to Brexit. They could halt Brexit and then, if EU leaders were willing to continue talking, Britain could return to the negotiating table. So everything that follows in this chapter assumes that this is our target: getting MPs to vote down the deal they are presented with.

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