A peoples vote is essential to avoid and ‘Armageddon’

A Government report published over the weekend reveals a doomsday scenario if a no deal Brexit is drawn up. It states that Britain could be hit with food and medicine shortages within two weeks of leaving the EU if a Brexit deal isn’t reached.

The civil service paper speculates on three different scenarios which it categorizes into three possibilities 1. Mild, 2. Severe and 3. Armageddon. Either way none of it sounds hugely promising. Worse still is that it’s not even the so-called ‘Armageddon’ scenario which could plunge the UK into metaphorical darkness.

Indeed, The Sunday Times revealed that its source said even the second scenario will lead to serious consequences for the UK: “In the second worst scenario, not even the worst, the port of Dover will collapse on day one. The supermarkets in Cornwall and Scotland will run out of food within a couple of days, and hospitals will run out of medicines within two weeks.”

The source added that “the RAF would be needed to transport emergency medicine to the far corners of the UK and warned that the country would also quickly run out of petrol.” It is deeply concerning to read let alone considering it could be a reality.

A people’s vote on the outcome of the deal is not only sensible but essential to give legitimacy to whatever the final agreement is.

And I am not alone with this view. I was pleased to see an open letter from 18 London MP’s to Jeremy Corbyn calling for a people’s vote on the deal Theresa May will bring back from the EU.

The letter, published in the Independent, calls on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to push for a referendum on the deal.

The letter states: “It cannot be right that 650 MPs decide on whether to accept the deal…that’s why we think it’s essential that there is a people’s vote on the final Brexit deal, so that 65 million people can have their voices heard as well.” The emergence of a deal is still far from clear, and there is an increasing possibility that there may be no deal at all.

This scenario as we have seen from the above will to lead to significant problems. These concerns have been raised by civil servants and therefore cannot be dismissed as “project fear” by David Davis and his team.