Any Brexit deal struck by Prime Minister Boris Johnson will need to be put to the British people in a referendum if it is to pass the UK parliament, a cross-party group of UK lawmakers told EURACTIV.
As talks intensified between EU and UK negotiators, with Johnson hoping to seal a Brexit deal at a European Council summit later this week, a cross-party delegation of six senior MPs – Dominic Grieve, Vince Cable, Caroline Lucas, Peter Grant, Liz Saville Roberts and David Lammy – travelled to Brussels on Wednesday to make the case for an extension so the UK can hold a referendum on Johnson’s deal.
They meet with French, Dutch and Irish diplomats and the chair of the European Parliament’s Brexit Steering Group, Guy Verhofstadt, ahead of the European Council on Thursday.
UK lawmakers are due to hold an emergency session on Saturday, but Mr Grieve, a former Attorney General who was expelled from the Conservative party for backing a law to prevent a no-deal Brexit, told EURACTIV a vote was unlikely to take place.
“If it is as he (Johnson) describes, then there will be a border down the Irish Sea, which is contrary to everything he has said previously and it looks like it is going to be a rather hard Brexit, which means that negotiating a future trading relationship is going to be rather difficult.”
“Parliament is going to need time to consider this, and this idea that we can be bamboozled and asked to decide on something on Saturday, I find pretty extraordinary.”
“If he doesn’t have a legal text, then there is no point in him presenting anything because there’s nothing to vote on… and we shouldn’t be having the Saturday sitting,” Grieve told EURACTIV. [...]
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