Shadow foreign secretary calls for an inquiry into Brexit

The Labour MP resisted calling for it to take place until it is all finished, but questioned whether or not Britain’s consistution is still fit for purpose because it did not appear to be holding the prime minister to account.

Speaking at a recording of POLITICO’s podcast at Podcast Live she said there needed to be ‘some form of inquiry.’

She said: ‘We will need to look at why it is that we spent billions of pounds on no deal. You know, why David Cameron had a referendum without telling the civil servants to prepare in case he lost the referendum,’ she said.

‘And also, frankly, we will need to look at a lot of Cabinet minutes where they are discussing what’s good for the Tory Party and not what’s good for the country,’ Thornberry continued.

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She suggested it could be something that a new Labour government would look at if it was elected at the next general election.

She said: ‘I can’t pretend that things have gone well and that we can carry on as we are. I think that the challenge of Brexit to our political system is a profound one. And I don’t think we should dodge that.’

Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson has previously called for a Chilcot-style public inquiry into the handling of Brexit.

He said: ‘We will certainly need a detailed postmortem of how this all came to pass.’