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A senior aide to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned yesterday that the nation faced a “violent, popular uprising” should a proposed second referendum undo the results of the 2016 referendum in which U.K. citizens voted to leave the European Union.
Johnson himself has said that “tempers need to calm down,” after a clash with members of Parliament over the prime minister’s suggestion that the best way to honor murdered Labour Party MP Jo Cox was to make sure that Brexit gets done. Cox, who was killed in 2016, was an advocate of remaining in the European Union.
On Thursday, Labour MP Paula Sheriff accused Johnson of stoking anger and death threats against Labour Party members and other “Remainers” with his use of language. Johnson has referred to Parliament’s legislation, which essentially took a “no-deal” Brexit off the table and greatly weakened Johnson’s negotiating power with the EU, as the “surrender act,” and has referred to it as a “betrayal” of U.K. citizens.
But both sides have been engaging in decidedly un-British behavior in these weeks leading up to the October 31 leave date, which was originally scheduled for March 31 of this year. Tory MP and “Leave” supporter Maria Caulfield related that just last week, her car tires were damaged with “nails and screws for the second time.”
“No one cares because I’m a Leaver and apparently deserve it,” Caulfield said. “Abuse of MPs and death threats were happening long before yesterday.”
Despite Johnson’s call for calm, he has refused to apologize and insists that he will continue to use the term “surrender act” when addressing the legislation that restricts his bargaining power with the EU.
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Indeed, for people who insist on a proper deal with the EU, which completely spells out the future relationship between Great Britain and the EU, Remainers in Parliament certainly acted against Johnson in his efforts to make that deal.
The deal that Johnson is working with is Theresa May’s original deal, which was agreed to by the European Union but was voted down decisively three times in Parliament in the lead-up to the original March 31 leave date. Now, with Parliament’s “surrender act,” Johnson must beg for concessions from the EU without the threat of a no-deal Brexit, which many on both sides of the English Channel fear would be disastrous for their respective economies.
In an interview with the Times, the unnamed cabinet minister claimed that if the 2016 Brexit referendum were overturned, either by a new referendum or by parliamentary action, a significant percentage of the population might violently take to the streets. The minister compared the current situation in the U.K. to the Yellow Vest movement in France and the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles.
“In this country we’ve never had the gilet jaunes [yellow vests] or the L.A. riots,” the minister said. “People don’t think it’s possible in this country just because it has not happened before. Now they have a model — gilets jaunes — they have encrypted phones to coordinate it, and it only takes a couple of nasty populist front-men to inspire people.”
The minister pointed out that literally millions of British citizens would be extremely angry if somehow the Brexit results of 2016 were to be overturned. He echoed Johnson’s claims that there would be a “catastrophic loss of confidence in our political system,” should the U.K. not leave the European Union.
Many Remainers are now pushing for a new referendum on Brexit, with the option of remaining in the EU. Johnson is pushing for a new general election — something the Labour Party has been harping about for two-plus years. But now, Labour opposes a general election, possibly knowing that they would lose.
“If we have a [new] referendum with 30 million people who vote, and we vote Remain by 66 percent, that’s 10 million people who are unhappy,” the minister pointed out.
“Even if 99 percent of them shrug it off, that’s still 100,000 really angry people who will write to their MP and not let it go.”
“It doesn’t take much and soon you have tens of thousands of people on the street,” the minister concluded.
Dominic Cummings, a chief strategist for the Leave movement and now chief advisor to Johnson, has said he finds it “odd” that the MPs, who have caused the stalemate on Brexit, would be shocked at the anger of the citizens.
“The MPs said we will have a referendum and we will respect the result,” Cummings said of the 2016 Brexit vote.
“Then they spent three years swerving all over the shop. It is not surprising that some people are angry about it. I find it very odd that these characters are complaining people are unhappy about their behavior and they also say that they want a referendum.”
“For me it says that fundamentally a lot of people in Parliament are more out of touch with the country now than they were in summer 2016,” Cummings said.
The same thing can be said of U.S. House Democrats. Indeed, the situation in Great Britain is analogous to the situation in the United States. Politicians, who live in their own bubble, completely out of touch with reality, are making decisions to attempt to overturn the election of 2016.
Photo: AP Images
