Exclusive media partner: The New York Times

Newsletter

Receive regular updates about forthcoming events and other news from Intelligence Squared

Thanks

You have been added to our mailing list and will now be among the first to hear about events.

Play video1:26:19

Watch

Stop Brexit

Is it time the public voted again on this defining issue of our times? Or should we embrace the opportunities presented by leaving the EU?

It’s time we came to to our senses. Brexit is a disaster and must be stopped. Leave campaigners promised our exit from the European Union would herald a glorious new era – the sunlit uplands of ‘global Britain’, with new trade deals signed in a matter of months and an extra £350 million per week for the NHS. But what do we have today? Sterling has collapsed, Boris has been busy bungling in Brussels, and the government’s own leaked economic assessments show that leaving the EU will harm every single region of the country, especially ‘left behind’ areas that voted to Leave. The public was misled, and as David Davis once said, ‘If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy’. Let’s end this madness and call the whole thing off.

That’s the reasoning of the Remoaners. But can you imagine the damage we’d do to our politics if we overturned the democratic expression of 17 million people – the single biggest mandate in British history? If these sneering liberals had their way, the masses would be forced to vote in referendum after referendum until they gave the ‘correct’ answer. What part of ‘take back control’ don’t they understand? And spare us the whingeing over economic forecasts. We all remember Project Fear and the phoney establishment warnings that the sky would fall in once we voted to Leave.


Speakers

For the motion

Gina Miller

Businesswoman and pro-EU campaigner


Businesswoman and campaigner. She was the lead claimant in the successful legal fight to allow parliament to vote on whether the UK could start the process of leaving the EU.

Chuka Umunna

MP for Streatham and pro-EU campaigner


Labour MP for Streatham and prominent pro-EU campaigner, who is now the leader of a coalition of cross-party groups representing 500,000 members pushing for a referendum on the final EU deal
Against the motion

Isabel Oakeshott

Journalist and broadcaster


Pro-Brexit journalist and broadcaster who was political editor of The Sunday Times. She is the author of the explosive biography of David Cameron, Call Me Dave, and wrote The Bad Boys of Brexit, an inside account of Nigel Farage and Arron Banks’ Leave.EU campaign.

Gerard Lyons

Chief economic strategist at the wealth manager Netwealth


Chief economic strategist at the wealth manager Netwealth, which he helped establish in 2016. He sits on the Board of Bank of China (UK), and of BGC (Europe), the global inter-dealer brokers. He has been a member of the advisory board of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE and Imperial College. He is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange.   
Chair

Nick Robinson

Presenter on Radio 4’s Today programme


Presenter on Radio 4’s Today programme and former BBC political editor.