Dominic Lawson, the son of the former Tory chancellor, wrote a column a couple of weeks ago (HERE) sneering at those of us who march against Brexit. He says we're out of touch with reality. In answer to a call from Chukka Umunna for the people to "have a vote" he sarcastically says he could have sworn we had one in 2016.
He talks of Brexit as the "largest British exercise in mass participatory democracy" as if seventeen million people voting for something must make it right.
In any event, he wilfully misunderstands Umunna who is not asking for a second referendum but a first referendum on the proposed deal that will decide our future. The mysterious deal we still don't know about nearly two years on. Lawson is happy with participatory democracy but he thinks it should only happen once!
Lawson quotes a BMG research poll that 57% of people now think the government should "get on with implementing the result" of the referendum. But I note he never quotes the YouGov polls showing falling support for Brexit. He doesn't acknowledge the fact that the British people are quite capable of accepting the result even if a majority think it was wrong. It will be when the impacts are better known that he will need to worry. Those leave voters who believed things would get better may not be happy to realise they were led by men like Lawson who had no idea what they were talking about.
And suggestions that Cambridge Analytica's activities might have had an impact on Brexit are brushed aside with the claim those who call for the vote to be anulled are "out of their mind's with grief and rage". Today the US Senate committee are grilling Mark Zuckerberg about the data breaches that Facebook allowed to occur amid worries the 2016 presidential election was hijacked. At least the Americans are taking it seriously.
