Apparently Burnham wrote a letter to ministers, in which he said this:
I am clear in my conviction that the Brexit deal negotiated by the Conservative government was not good enough for Britain… It has led to a decade of low growth, burdened businesses with more red tape and weakened our ability to control immigration. It is a harder Brexit than was promised at the EU referendum.
…we will need to consider the UK’s long-term relationship with the EU as part of our 10-year plan. I will set out the next steps for this process around the [UK-EU] summit.
Hopefully that summit brings some good news (i.e. closer relations between the UK and EU).
Some Brexiteers suggested that Brexit would be a softer affair, in the lead up to the referendum.
Tory peer Daniel Hannan (formerly an MEP) said in 2015: “absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market”. And yet we did leave the single market, as part of the hard Brexit pursued by the Tories.
But yes I suppose other leading Brexiteers didn’t make details explicit. Perhaps, after the Brexit referendum, we should have had a second referendum to determine what shape Brexit should take. We could have remained in the single market for many industries (similar to Norway/Switzerland/Iceland) or the customs union (similar to Turkey), or both.
Brexiteers are famously supportive of “democracy” so they shouldn’t have had any objections to a second referendum.
Aye, having a second referendum after the details were hashed out would have been more fair. But that’s not what Burnham has said. What he’s said doesn’t align with reality.
He’s knowingly lying in order to manipulate. He’s a politician after all.
Having a direct democracy would be more fair.
Why do we need representatives to travel to Westminster to have their say on our behalf?