Letters – Bremaining Bremoaing and all things Brexit

I am an ardent Remainer – this is something regular readers of any local paper, or of the comments section of any Brexit themed Spotted: Spalding post will attest to and know well.

I feel, therefore, that I need to highlight the fact that what follows is not a result of my pro-EU opinions, but rather as a result of my absolute hatred for hypocrisy and double-standards.

On July 6, Theresa May and the other 22 members of her Cabinet met at Chequers to come to a definitive agreement – the meeting is reported to have taken 12 hours with all participants agreeing that the three-page document was absolutely the way to go.

Three days later, on July 9, both David Davis (our head Brexit negotiator) and Boris Johnson (Foreign Secretary) resigned from their positions, reportedly as a result of the differences of opinion they held with the previously agreed plan for the Brexit deal.

Personally, I feel as though if they do not agree with the plan, they are absolutely right to resign from their positions.

I have absolutely no complaints whatsoever with that.

But are we likely to see them acknowledging that, perhaps, if they have changed their stance on something so that they so recently agreed to (and presumably, had some form of vote on), that the same must surely be possible for the general population?

Indeed, if we extrapolate a few statistics from the data above, and assume that seeing as these are supposed to be the highest level of representation of the people, their percentages represent the percentages of the people too, we can determine a few key things here.

First, of the 23 people we know attended the meeting, two have changed their stance.

That works out at a little under 8.7 per cent, so let’s be sensible and instead drop it down to eight per cent. If we apply that percentage of the number of people that voted in the referendum (irrespective of their vote), you come to a little under 2.7 million people.

Now, the point of this letter is to ask this question – why, if the two ministers have been so capable of changing their mind after a mere three days, are they so vehemently against the general population having a chance to express whether they too have, in fact, changed their minds?

Surely, the proper thing to do would be for them to say, “you know what, we get it, maybe we should have another look at this”, rather than assuming that they are the only people that could possible have a change of opinion on the matter?

Jordan Swallow
Spalding