Ex-PM Gordon Brown calls for year-long Brexit delay to 'consult' voters
The ex-Labour premier says parliament has "proved itself totally incapable of resolving the Brexit issue".
Thursday 7 March 2019 18:50, UK
Former prime minister Gordon Brown is calling for a year-long delay to Brexit in order to "bring the country together".
The ex-Labour premier made his latest intervention over the UK's exit from the EU just 22 days before the country's scheduled departure.
More than two years and eight months after the EU referendum, Mr Brown told Sky News an extension to the Article 50 negotiating period was needed to "allow the country to be consulted".
Prime Minister Theresa May will next week hold a second vote on her Brexit deal in the House of Commons, after MPs overwhelmingly opposed her withdrawal agreement in January.
If her deal is rejected again, Mrs May has promised to then hold two further votes on whether MPs want to authorise a no-deal Brexit, or request a "short, limited" extension to the Article 50 period and thereby prolong the UK's membership of the EU.
However, Mr Brown believes any extension to the Article 50 period - currently a two-year timeframe for negotiating the UK's exit, which is due to end on 29 March - should be for longer.
He said: "I regret to say this but parliament has, unfortunately, proved itself totally incapable of resolving the Brexit issue.
"And we're now faced with the situation where we're going to have economic chaos if we go ahead with Brexit, we're going to have a constitutional impasse because they'll never pass the legislation in time.
"The country is ever more divided and yet we don't have any idea what the final resolution to this is.
"The only way to deal with this impasse is to have an extension of the negotiating period.
"But an extension for three months would be inadequate because it would just be the same old squabbling."
Mr Brown, who has previously expressed a belief a second EU referendum will be held, claimed prominent business leaders, trade unionists and groups like anti-racism campaign Hope Not Hate would appeal for MPs to extend Article 50 next week.
Prolonging the UK's membership of the EU would "allow the country to be consulted in citizens' hearings", suggested Mr Brown.
He added: "I don't think we can unite the country around any option unless there's a proper consultation on the detail, not just on the general item but on the detail of what is being proposed.
"When people in the country look at it, they ask: 'Are you dealing with the problem of immigration? Are you dealing with sovereignty? What does it mean for my job? What does it mean for my livelihood?'
"When these issues are raised I think you'll get, as was found in the Irish abortion referendum, you find you get people prepared to discuss this, prepared to look at new ways of solving the problem.
"And then the atmosphere is not so hateful as it has become over the Brexit referendum."