‘Scared Brexiteers don’t want another vote – we’d win’

He said: ‘This idea that it is anti-democratic for the country to vote in a certain way and then have this long, torturous, messy process where the politicians are screwing it up left, right and centre and not be able to say ‘you’ve done your best Theresa May now put it back to us and see if it is what we want’ …

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‘I think the reason Nadine Dorries, Boris Johnson and Farage and Hannan and Rees-Mogg, the reason they are terrified of this is because they know public opinion has changed.’

The former Labour Party communications chief who helped mastermind Tony Blair’s years in power went on to savage Boris Johnson who has supercharged his bid to topple the prime minister in recent days.

‘Boris Johnson was probably the worst foreign secretary we’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘People in diplomacy know that, people in politics know that. Don’t forget – you do tend to treat him like a showbiz character – this is the guy that delivered Brexit. And Brexit has turned out, in most people’s eyes, to be a completed mess.

‘There is no Brexit plan. The ERG – the Rees-Mogg outfit – were going to publish their plan for Brexit, now they’ve decided not to. There is no plan. And Theresa May – love her or hate her and I think she is a pretty hopeless prime minister – she is trying to make sense of the vote that we had two years ago, and what the country is coming to realise is that it can’t be done. The big questions that were around on June 24, 2016, Northern Ireland, the trade deal, they are still not resolved.’

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