Theresa May has dismissed a call for a second referendum as “out of the question”, affirming that Britain will be leaving the EU.
The Prime Minister was asked whether people should have the chance to vote again by Labour’s Paul Flynn (Newport West), who said “second thoughts” were superior.
Speaking in the Commons, Mr Flynn asked: “Isn’t it right that three years after the referendum, when we’re thinking of taking this step, we allow the public to have a second opinion on this in the knowledge that second thoughts are always superior to first thoughts?”
Labour’s Paul Flynn asked if the PM thought it would be right to hold a second referendum on Brexit (Stefan Rousseau/PA)
Mrs May replied: “Can I say to (Mr Flynn) that I think this is about more than a decision to leave the European Union: it’s about whether the public can trust their politicians to put into place the decision that they have taken.
“And I suggest that any suggestion that we in some sense say to the public ‘oh you better have a second referendum because we think you got it wrong’ – that is out of the question – we will be leaving the European Union.”
Liberal Democrat Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) asked Mrs May when she would “face down the ideologues in her party, on her back benches and indeed in her Cabinet” who are clamouring for no deal “from the safety of their stately homes and their chateaux, their trust funds and their inherited wealth”, which he said they know “will do huge damage to the ‘just about managing’, leave the UK weaker and leave our position in the world much smaller”.
“When is she going to stand up for remain voters and indeed the leave voters who do not want the economic catastrophe that the Eurosceptic obsessives on her benches want to inflict upon us?”
Mrs May said she was “standing up for the British people who voted that we should leave the European Union, unlike the Liberal Democrat Party who want to tell the British people that they got the answer wrong”.