AliPali

😮 Good God. Even The Telegraph is printing the economic case for undoing Brexit. Goldman Sachs says rejoining the Single Market could make the UK economy up to £150bn larger. For years we were told Brexit would unlock growth. Now the growth opportunity being discussed is removing the barriers Brexit created.

‼️ Boston voted more than 75% Leave 🔥 the highest Leave vote in Britain. Ten years later, residents tell the i that jobs are still scarce, public services still struggle, immigration has not disappeared and life has not noticeably improved. One Leave voter says: “It’s made no difference, has it?” Another admits: “We’re a poorer country than we would have been if we’d stayed in.” That tells us something important. People in places like Boston weren’t wrong to be angry. They had been living with decades of economic decline, low wages and disappearing industry. But the EU wasn’t the cause of those failures and Brexit didn’t cure them. The real task now is bigger than simply rejoining Europe. We need to rebuild Britain at home while rebuilding our relationship with Europe abroad. That is how you finally address the grievances that produced Brexit in the first place.

‼️ If the Prime Minister has now been told that Russia interfered in the 2016 referendum, the public is entitled to know what happened, what the intelligence services concluded, who was involved, and why the evidence was not properly examined and disclosed years ago. We need a public inquiry to examine what government knew about foreign interference, when it knew it, what intelligence existed before and after the referendum, what advice ministers received, and whether Parliament was given a materially incomplete picture when Theresa May served Article 50 notification.

‼️ This is a constitutional bombshell. For the first time, a British prime minister has confirmed that UK authorities believe Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum. That does not prove Russia changed the result, nor does it establish criminal involvement by Leave campaigners. But it confirms that a hostile state attempted to interfere in the most consequential democratic decision Britain has taken in generations. The 2020 Russia Report could not reach a conclusion because the government had neither commissioned nor supplied a proper post-referendum assessment. Boris Johnson’s government then rejected the Intelligence and Security Committee’s request for one. Andy Burnham must now publish an unclassified account setting out: • what Russia did; • which voters and organisations were targeted; • how extensive the operation was; • what ministers and intelligence agencies knew; and • why the truth was withheld for so long. Nobody can credibly insist that the decision of 2016 is eternally sacred while simultaneously arguing that the public must never be allowed to reconsider it, especially now that Russian interference has been officially confirmed. Brexit was authorised by a referendum conducted without these facts. Britain deserves the truth and a democratic opportunity to decide its future again.