Julia Hartley-Brewer tells Sky News: ‘I’d prefer to Remain than have May’s deal’

Julia Hartley-Brewer and Polly Toynbee on Sky News. Photograph: Sky. - Credit: Archant

Outspoken Brexiteer Julia Hartley-Brewer has revealed she would rather Remain in the EU than Leave on Theresa May’s terms – in a heated row on television with journalist Polly Toynbee.

The argument between the talkRADIO host and the Guardian journalist on Sky News appeared to spill out on to Twitter after Toynbee branded Hartley-Brewer ‘right wing’ with a ‘nutty vision’ of Brexit.

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The Brexiteer said she would ‘prefer to Remain than have Mrs May’s deal’ as ‘it is worse than Remaining as it ties us in’, but added that she would ‘100%’ back a no-deal if it was on any ballot paper.

Toynbee snapped that it was ‘madness’ and said there was ‘no support’ for it.

She said: ‘Luckily there are very, very few people either in Parliament or outside Parliament that agree with you.’

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‘There is no support for no deal. The government is now spending £2billion on a no deal scenario that would be a disaster that nobody supports.’

Toynbee also believed the government was trying to scare people into support Theresa May’s deal.

‘She wants to frighten people with no-deal so much, we’ve got soldiers on the streets, we’ve got fridges storing medicines and foods, and people are being told to stockpile at home as if we’re facing the black death or war. That she will frighten them so much that we will come back from Christmas and tuck in under her deal.’

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Discussing ways to break the impasse, Hartley-Brewer branded it ‘more patronising claptrap’, but Toynbee interjected: ‘It isn’t, it’s about what kind of Leave. What the last one did was that they changed their minds not necessarily from Leave to Remain, but they said ‘ah, we must avoid this problem and that problem.’

‘So they ended up with a different vision of what kind of Leave, not your nutty leave of let’s just get out.’

The row spilled on to social media after Toynbee called Hartley-Brewer an ‘Andrew Bridgen-ite’ who is on the ‘far right of the spectrum’ with a video posted as the pair continued to argue.