Peter Mandelson, the so-called ‘prince of darkness’ spin doctor to globalist former Prime Minister Tony Blair, has expressed confidence Theresa May will give in to calls for a second referendum on Brexit, in effect giving diehard Remainers like himself another chance to prevent Britain leaving the European Union.
Discussing the very poor progress on the Brexit deal reached by fellow Remain campaigner Theresa May, the Labour big-hitter — since elevated to the House of Lords for his service to Blair — said it was “obvious” to him that Britain would not be taking back control or regaining any national sovereignty from the European Union, and this was something that Theresa May had to “absolutely come clean over”.
Remarking that since the Chequers deal, May had come to embrace a very different approach to negotiations which Brexiteers have found increasingly unacceptable, Mandelson told Sky anchor Adam Boulton that “she has deserted her previous approach, she wants to find a new approach to the Brexit negotiations, and she has crossed the Rubicon but leaving a very large number of Tory MPs on the other bank”.
Calling on the Prime Minister to put the economy before sovereignty — in effect caving in to factions within the mainstream political parties who would see Britain leave the European Union in name only and ignore the spirit of the Brexit referendum — Mandelson said that by having a second referendum, the Prime Minister could defeat pro-independence members within her own party, who he characterised as “Brextremists”.
Repeatedly fending off the suggestion that running the vote again would be a similar tactic to that previously seen in Ireland and Denmark, which both voted against the European Union in national referendums before holding second votes shortly afterwards to get the desired result, Mandelson called May’s progress so far a “shambles”.
In calling to overturn the largest vote in favour of anything in British political history, the infamous spin doctor told Sky: “What’s important for me is the principle of giving people a vote. In my view, the only way we are going to get democratic legitimacy for the final deal is if the people themselves can sign off on it. That’s what’s got to happen, and Mrs May will be greatly assisted in dealing with her own parties if that public sanction, that backstop, is in place.”
Mandelson is a prominent voice in the growing campaign among Europhile politicians to keep Britain in the European Union, not least among them being Mandelson’s old boss Tony Blair.
Apparently recovered from the reputational damage of leading the United Kingdom into the Iraq War and his questionable later stint as a Middle East peace envoy, the former prime minister has returned to the fray of domestic politics to call for another vote, and remarkably even refused to rule out a third referendum if the vote did not go his way.
Blair and others have sold the idea of a second referendum as based on the idea that the public did not understand what they were voting for the first time around — a situation at least in part engineered by the British government, which refused to allow any work to be done on preparing for a potential Brexit vote.
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook