Soros ‘campaign’ calls on voters to target MPs on Brexit

Bloomberg

The anti-Brexit campaign group backed by billionaire George Soros called on British voters to pressure members of Parliament to force a referendum on the government’s divorce deal with the European Union.
Best for Britain, which receives about 20 percent of its funding from Soros, wants a “national conversation” about Brexit and its effects to help trigger a second vote by March next year, the group’s chairman Mark Malloch-Brown told reporters in London on June 08.
Between 40 and 50 lawmakers have said they will support the move, he said — a fraction of the number needed to get legislation through the 650-member House of Commons. But others are open to persuasion, he said.
“Our politics has failed us. We remain a divided Britain with the two warring factions we woke up to the morning after the referendum,” he said. “Like men looking for a lifeboat in a storm, my suspicion is that if we get some momentum behind this idea we’ll very quickly recruit parliamentarians to it.”
Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan said it would be possible for Britain to hold a referendum on the exit deal — though not on leaving the EU itself.
That approach was rejected by Malloch-Brown, who said voters should be given the choice to remain in the EU if they don’t like the agreement Prime Minister Theresa May brings back from Brussels.
The Labour Party, whose support would be needed to win a vote in the Commons, hasn’t ruled out backing such a plan, economy spokesman John McDonnell said in April. Five of the party’s lawmakers from northeast England signed a letter calling for a referendum last month, though Owen Smith was fired as the party’s Northern Ireland spokesman for making a similar call earlier in the year.
Best for Britain’s plan is to appeal directly to voters through campaign events across the country supported by 50,000 volunteers.

Johnson attacks Brexit plans
Bloomberg

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson attacked PM Theresa May’s Brexit policy at a private dinner where he said Britain’s approach should to be more like the one Donald Trump would take.
A recording of Johnson’s comments, made to a dinner of around 20 people, was leaked to Buzzfeed and the Times. It showed him saying:
There “may now be a meltdown” in negotiations, but “I don’t want anybody to panic” because “It’s going to be all right in the end.”
There was a strong chance Brexit talks would leave the UK “locked in orbit around the EU, in the customs union and to a large extent still in the single market.” The argument at the center of government about Brexit was “very, very difficult.” May is about to begin being “much more combative” with the EU.
That this would be unacceptable if it were permanent. He would accept temporary closeness to the EU, so long as Britain eventually got far away.