Meeting of the Parliament 27 March 2019
I recognise the multitude of reasons why people voted for Brexit. After this process, we cannot just go back to how we were. We must recognise that some people in our society felt that they were being left out—many communities in the north of England certainly felt like that. We need to address those fundamental issues, to ensure that, in future, people do not use Brexit or another such process to express their views, because there is another mechanism whereby they can do so.
Let us contrast the Brexit process with the process of devolution. Devolution was built up through a constitutional convention, various marches, manifesto commitments from all the parties, a white paper, involvement of all the parties and of people right across society, and then endorsement through a referendum.
The Brexit process has been astonishingly different. What Government puts forward a referendum on something that it does not want to happen? No white paper was produced. There was no detail, there was no combined plan, and there was no consultation across society about what Brexit would actually look like—nothing like that happened.
When we look back to the constitutional convention process that led to the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, it is striking to see how beneficial that process was, compared with the Brexit process. That adds more weight to the case for a people’s vote or confirmatory referendum.
We need that vote, because we did not have the detail before the referendum, whatever people say. We had slogans on the side of a bus. We had a multitude of grievances, which were put forward by a multitude of campaigns. How on earth can we hold those campaigns to account? If the Brexiteers cannot agree among themselves now what Brexit actually means, how on earth were we supposed to know in 2016 what Brexit meant? There was no way of knowing what it meant back then, given that Brexiteers cannot agree on what it means now. That is another reason why we should have a confirmatory referendum.