As a Young Conservative, I support our Prime Minister. In opening with that I’m sure I’ve just alienated the entire Labour Party, all 42 Liberal Democrats, and the right wing of the Conservative Party – but they aren’t who I aim to convince. Although I actively campaigned to remain a member of the European Union, I fully accepted the result of the 2016 referendum.
I believe in our party and our great country to be strong and pragmatic enough to make it work, but the economic forecasts of a so-called hard Brexit – including those from within Government – are woeful. That’s why we’ve always needed compromise not impetuous red lines. Now we seem to have reached a fundamental impasse in negotiations with Brussels, that simple fact might at last become clear, but the PM may have run out of domestic room to manoeuvre.
The Prime Minister said in her Mansion House speech that any Brexit deal must endure, not break down and leave us in perpetual political purgatory. To do that, it needs the support of young people like me who voted overwhelmingly to Remain in 2016. If we get it wrong, every ill we encounter as a nation will be blamed on “Tory Brexit” and our party will be unelectable for a generation or more.
To leave with no deal is not an option. How could any Government continue to govern after enacting a policy it knows will make its people worse off? We have already begun civil contingency planning; the stuff of war, pandemic, and natural disaster brought into everyday political life. It is surely time to stop and reflect on how far we have strayed from the illusory promises of the Leave campaign.
What more sovereign and democratic way could we find to reaffirm our course than to put the final Brexit deal back to the people with all the facts available? If it is still the will of the people to leave then we can do so confidently with informed consent, if it is not then we have the opportunity to bury the issue of Brexit and get on with the business of building a country that works for everyone.
I still don’t believe referenda truly belong in a Parliamentary democracy, but that is precisely why another one may be the only way to move forward. With no majority for any single Brexit outcome in Parliament, our representatives are incapacitated. The impetus of a binding referendum would break the deadlock if we can just persuade them to give us the chance.
It’s time for the moderates in our party, the apparent silent majority, to speak up before it’s too late. We have a strong tradition of pro-European values which we must defend, not for the sake of the establishment, but for millions of people across the country who demand a final say. That’s why I’ll be marching for a People’s Vote today, and why I hope you’ll support one too.
Andrew Bulman 