menu
menu
Bristol’s Green MEP, Molly Scott Cato, has written to all 55 South West MPs urging them to reject Theresa May’s Brexit deal in next week’s crucial parliamentary vote. She has urged them to back a People’s Vote instead – effectively handing the decision on the country’s future back to voters.
Molly said:
“Theresa May’s deal is a blind Brexit. The 585 pages of the Withdrawal Agreement are only about the exit arrangements and the nature of the two year transition period. Our long-term future, on the other hand, is outlined in just 26 pages, in the Political Declaration, which is highly vague and none of it legally binding. This slim document poses more questions than it does provide answers. What, for example, will happen to the South West’s fisheries? This is not clear but certainly, the idea of the UK regaining control of our waters post-Brexit has sunk without trace.
“Neither is there any prospect of renegotiation, a myth being peddled by both extreme Tory Brexiteers and many Labour MPs. The EU have made quite clear that after two years of negotiations, this is it; they will not extend the two-year Article 50 period just because we have made a mess of Brexit and fancy another go.”
In her letter to MPs Molly Scott Cato points to recent polls which show the South West region has seen a large swing from Leave to Remain; many areas where a majority voted to exit the EU are now polling majority support for remaining a member. She urges the region’s MPs to support a Peoples Vote as the way to ‘extricate ourselves, in the most democratic way possible, from an impending national disaster.’ She says such a referendum must include a remain option due to the strong shift in public opinion in favour of remaining in the EU.
Molly concluded:
“If Brexit was about power and sovereignty, then we can be sure that the prime minister’s deal leaves us diminished: we would become rule takers rather than rule makers. Far from the cake-and-eat fantasies of Brexiters, we will be left to gather up the crumbs from under the EU table.
“I am looking to the 55 MPs in South West England to do their patriotic duty and vote down this terrible deal and to have the honesty and consistency to trust the people to make the final decision.”