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September 16, 2019 - 7:30am
Niall Hodson is a Lib Dem councillor from Sunderland – which voted 61-39 in favour of Brexit in 2016 – and he took to the stage at the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth to argue *against* the adoption of the new Lib Dem policy of revoking Article 50 and cancelling Brexit without a referendum.
The policy was overwhelmingly supported and he won’t make the mainstream news reports – but it’s a powerful warning which he delivered with good humour. He even got some applause at the end. Here are his key arguments:
Do we really need to be piling on more and more Remain votes in London constituencies? What are we offering to the North, to the South West, to Wales, because I don’t think it’s an awful lot with a motion like this…
This strikes me as an undeliverable promise. And you may remember as Liberal Democrats, we’ve had one of those before. If we end up in a coalition … we aren’t going to be pushing through revoking article 50… I don’t want to be in a position again where the Liberal Democrats have promised something and done something else.
Freddie Sayers is the Editor-in-Chief & CEO of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome.
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