Why we need a people's vote on Brexit

With little thought for their responsibilities they lit the fuse and ran away. They lacked the integrity to see the job through. The truth is that they still don’t have a plan for our country’s future – if they did they would have told us by now.

I feel nothing but contempt for their actions, but now it falls to Parliament to pick up the pieces.

Submitting Article 50 before the government had a plan was an act of vandalism against our country. When I voted against Article 50, I told Parliament that one of my reasons for doing so was because Government was not ready for the negotiations that were to follow. At that time, Government ministers couldn’t even agree their own red lines amongst themselves, so how could we have confidence in them to negotiate effectively with 27 other member states? What’s amazing is that those EU countries have published their position and stuck to it!

Even sixteen months on, they are still squabbling amongst themselves, when time is running out for the negotiations. Their failure to lead and to put the country first is causing unbelievable anxiety for businesses and is already wreaking havoc on our economy.

It’s clear now that the Brexiteers don’t have a plan, and the Government is too divided to be capable of leading effective negotiations. The proposals they’ve taken so long to come up with won’t satisfy anybody, and it’s clear now that this isn’t a Brexit that anyone voted for.

That’s why I’m calling for a people’s vote so that our community can have its say on any deal that is eventually struck. It’s becoming clearer every day that the only way to sort this political mess out is to let voters take back control of this process and ultimately decide if the deal matches the promises made during the referendum, or whether we need to think again.

Peter Kyle is the Labour MP for Hove.

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