Lord Adonis’s Campaign In Guildford for a ‘People’s Vote’ Wins Applause

Published on: 3 Apr, 2019
Updated on: 5 Apr, 2019

Lord Adonis put the case to cancel Brexit and for a second referendum to a already convinced audience.

Lord Adonis, Labour peer and prominent anti-Brexit campaigner, came to Guildford on Tuesday night (April 3, 2019) to put the case against Brexit to a packed crowd in St Nicolas’ refurbished Community Centre in Bury Street.

Trains delayed him for 30 minutes but he was warmly applauded on arrival and during his witty and enthusiastic speech by what was clearly an 100-strong audience largely of Remain supporters.

The lack of trade deals achieved by Liam Fox, Secretary of State for International Trade, he said, “would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic”.

He said the Prime Minister continued to try to “spin things out by insisting on her deal or no deal. I respect the office of Prime Minister but I am rapidly losing respect for Theresa May”.

He stressed the importance of getting a long extension to Brexit and a second referendum so the government would not continue to face a cliff-edge. “The right thing, the democratic thing, is to put it back to the people. We are in a fundamentally different position than we were three years ago.”

He said that there were four aspects to focus on in at a “People’s Vote” which he listed as jobs, trade and the economy will be badly affected by Brexit, there could be a return to the Troubles in Northern Ireland and young people did not want Brexit. “We are going to be shut up on a small island with Jacob Rees-Mogg,” he quoted one young person telling him and “the EU is the best peace project in the history of Europe”.

He concluded: “I am a professional optimist. It will be difficult but we will get there.”

A packed house in St Nicolas’ Church Community Centre in Bury Street waits patiently for Lord Adonis, delayed by train problem.

There were passionately phrased questions from the audience including about the “illegality of the Vote Leave campaign” which Lord Adonis thought was one reason for a second referendum but not the decisive reason.

When asked how they would win a second vote when the polling didn’t appear to have significantly moved since June 2016, he said: “We didn’t have strong grassroots in 2016. We need to convince young people who didn’t vote at all. We will be passionate. The people who want to win most will win.”

He talked about possible slogans for any future campaign. He said “Did you vote to be poorer?” and the positive-sounding “Europe Works” had been discussed. But he was most convinced by the phrase used by Gordon Brown in the 2016 referendum, “Lead Not Leave”. That got a round of applause.

He was given a Lewis Carroll mug from Ian Stewart, representing the Guildford and Woking in Europe group with a quote from Alice Through the Looking-Glass: “We’re all mad here”.

Lord Adonis’s Tweet on Monday after the Indicative Votes at Westminster.

Responses to Lord Adonis’s Campaign In Guildford for a ‘People’s Vote’ Wins Applause

Stuart Barnes Reply

April 4, 2019 at 9:47 am

If the Remainers achieve a second referendum or a general election, will anyone bother to vote? After all if they (the officer class who consider themselves above the poor bloody infantry) will demand another vote until we, the plebs, get it right! People like Adonis and his chums will see to that. So what is the point?
Pearl Catlin Reply

April 4, 2019 at 3:59 pm

So Lord Adonis wants a “People’s vote”.

Who voted before then? Monkeys?
Ron Medlow Reply

April 5, 2019 at 8:09 pm

Surely it is the Eton boys that constitute the officer class – Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson together with others in the ERG.
- Stuart Barnes Reply
  
  April 6, 2019 at 9:23 am
  
  Of course Ron Medlow is literally right but he obviously did not understand that my comment above was meant to be ironic.
  
  What I meant was that the MPs and unelected Lords (of all parties), even though many of them would be incapable of getting a proper job in the real world, think themselves to be the officer class when comparing themselves to us (the voters/plebs/poor bloody infantry) who annoyingly do not vote the way they (the MPs) want.
  
  Anyway they will find out what we think the hard way, when at the next chance we get we boot the smug, self-satisfied types out of their soft sinecures and send them to the unemployment offices.