An inconvenient truth.

Have a look at Paddy Ashdown.  Leave means Leave.  It's pretty clear is it not?

Ms Jo Swinson is my MP.  She is an excellent representative of the community that elected her to represent them in Westminster.  She deals, in my experience, without fear or favour for each constituent.     

Where she falls down is her continued challenging the democratic mandate that was given to the people by parliament in relation to the EU, resulting in the 2016 referendum.   The choice was simple as her party Leader Paddy Ashdown said. It's Leave or Remain.   Winner takes all.  Even if it is by just 1%.

And the government used £9m of taxpayers money to tell us why, in their opinion, Remain was the best answer.   The people chose to differ.  That is democracy.     

This of course is territory the Lib Dems have been keen to talk about before.  But it is an inconvenient truth that their 2010 election manifesto, on which Ms Swinson stood, called for a national vote on the UKs  EU membership.   

Here's what they had to say:  “The European Union has evolved significantly since the last public vote on membership over thirty years ago.  Liberal Democrats therefore remain committed to an in / out referendum the next time a British government signs up for fundamental change in the relationship between the UK and the EU.”   

And there were only three options they thought were appropriate.    (a) remain a member of the European Union on the current terms;  (b) leave the European Union; or (c) re-negotiate the terms of its membership in order to create a new relationship based on trade and co-operation.    

In 2015 Tim Farron and other Lib Dems, with another inconvenient truth, supported the European Union Referendum Bill which passed its second reading on division of 544 to 53.  So, only 6 years after expressing her desire to hold a referendum in her Manifesto commitment, she got her way.  And the people gave an answer.   

We were to Leave.     

She and her fellow Lib Dems didn’t like the result.  What she and her fellow Remainers have done since then is to try and thwart the democratic mandate of the people given to them by parliament.   

Her Exit from Brexit campaign is an insult to all those who voted, irrespective of whether they voted Leave or Remain.   

Which is a pity.   Pooling of minds at a time like this should have been the obvious thinking for all politicians, not to try and undermine democracy or denigrate those who voted leave.    

If she is looking for an answer it is to go back to what President Tusk offered us on 7 March—a wide-ranging free trade deal.  That floundered on the issue of the Northern Ireland border, as will the ludicrously titled backstop. But we all know that using existing techniques and technologies that are available today within the existing customs code, we can resolve the problem of the border and go back and take up that offer.     

Also, when people demonise World Trade Organisation terms they clearly chose to ignore or don’t realise these are the terms on which 164 countries conduct 98% of the total of world trade.  It is absolutely childish to describe this as “leaping off a cliff” and a “catastrophe”. It insults us.  And it insults all of these nations that trade on WTO.   

I do realise that the Lib Dems believe in a European super state.  But with that, as is now clear, comes a single army.  A single foreign policy. A single currency. An anthem. And more.   Only they have consistently supported staying inside the single market and customs union, which the nation voted explicitly to leave in the Peoples Vote in 2016, a stance that didn’t do them much good at the ballot box.  12 seats out of 650 in 2017.

The people of the UK had a look over that cliff and decided no thanks.  We're out..