Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer has said any Brexit deal should be enshrined in law before being put to a public vote.
Outlining Labour’s policy of a public vote between a ‘credible leave option’ and Remain, Starmer has said it must involve a “negotiated deal”.
“When I say ‘negotiated deal’, I mean one that the EU would actually sign off, because I do not think it is fair to people to offer an option to leave that is not a proper option,” Starmer explains.
Building on Labour’s policy, Starmer says the implementation law for any negotiated deal should be passed first, potentially subject to a coming-into-force date, “to show that it could be done straightaway.”
“We would have to show that the deal had been secured with the EU and could therefore be delivered, and also that we had already put in place the means to deliver it,” Starmer says.
As the latest Brexit negotiations go down to the wire, the shadow Brexit secretary has said he would back a public vote on “any deal that comes back from this Government”.
Starmer: “Having had two and a half years of failed deals and division, the only way now to break the impasse is to put whatever the deal is back to the public so that they can make a simple decision: do we want to leave on the terms on offer or would we not rather remain and break the impasse?”
If we go down the road of having a referendum, I think that it must be between a negotiated deal and remain.
I would go further. I would advocate that this House actually passed the implementation legislation,
