CONSERVATIVE PARTY CONFERENCE There is no time for a second referendum vote before the UK leaves the European Union, Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP for North East Somerset and figurehead of the Tory hard Brexit block, has warned.
“That seems to me unlikely in terms of practice and difficult in parliamentary time scale,” he told a packed fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference.
“Let’s be confident and positive that there will not be a people’s vote because practically they cannot get it through in time, but also because dishonest politics doesn’t work.”
Rees-Mogg was addressing announcements at the Labour Conference last week – and from Tory MPs – demanding a people’s vote to approve any deal, or even a second referendum.
He was the head of a line-up of hard-right Conservatives drumming up support among party members to ensure that the UK’s exit from the European Union was not derailed.
“Making a success of Brexit is easy as long as we hold our nerve,” he said.
Red-blooded Conservative approach
He wants a Canada-plus deal from the EU trade negotiations but told the audience there is nothing to fear from world trade terms and a proper “red-blooded Conservative approach to governing that frees the people from being tied down”.
Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of Conservative backbenchers, is set to be one of the celebrities of the conference and the queue of delegates was snaking through the Birmingham’s International Convention Centre for his fringe session.
“It is about politicians who are there to help people lead the lives they want to lead and taking obstacles out of their way, not socialist politicians telling us how to lead our lives in the first place,” he said.
Dead duck
Rees-Mogg was scathing about Theresa May’s Chequers proposal, describing it as: “Not a dying duck in a thunderstorm. It is the deadest dying duck in a thunderstorm.”
“I would not support Chequers as it is today,” he said. “It is simply remaining under the yoke of the European Union… Out of Europe and run by Europe.”
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