Scottish Green Party leaders back "people's vote" on Brexit deal
Both Patrick Harvie and Maggie Chapman outlined their support at the paty conference in Glasgow on Saturday.
The co-conveners of the Scottish Green Party have given their backing to a vote on the final Brexit deal.
Patrick Harvie and Maggie Chapman both pledged their support for a so-called “people's vote” in a bid to stop the UK leaving the EU.
Speaking at the party conference in Glasgow, Ms Chapman said she is “very much in favour of the principle of a people's vote”.
Mr Harvie told delegates they would have the chance to join the campaign for a People's Vote in a motion to be debated at the conference.
“Like Maggie, I can't stay neutral on that question,” he said.
“Even if it is a narrow window of opportunity to bring that vote about, and even if bringing it about gives us no guarantee of the outcome, we've already said as a party that it looks like now being the only way, the only possibility of stopping Brexit.”
He said the motion gives party members the choice to “join the chorus of voices saying loudly that the only thing to do is to stop this mess and, if Westminster won't come to its senses, let the public be the ones to cancel Brexit”.
Mr Harvie said the Brexit process is “incompetent chaos” and a “direct assault on the authority of our parliament”.
He warned that leaving the EU would harm Scotland as well as the rest of the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and criticised the Conservative and Labour stance on immigration, saying freedom of movement is a “human right”.
The Green MSP said the Scottish Greens remain committed to Scotland's future as an independent country which is a full member of Europe.
He added: “The extreme Brexiteers are already flirting with the sociopaths of the US libertarian right, the same outfits which have been a force for ill from climate denial to union-busting.
“That's the agenda these people want to impose on us - one in which the social, environmental and workplace rights and protections which were fought for by generations before us are torn to pieces in the pursuit of an already failed economic system.”
He ridiculed proposals for a Festival of Brexit, saying: “Can any day out sound less appealing?”
He added: “The only reason to call a festival would be if we cancel Brexit and stop this mess.”
The conference also heard from Green member of the Irish senate, Grace O'Sullivan, who warned of concern in Ireland that the UK is “three seconds from midnight” in the Brexit negotiations but appears to have no resolutions to key problems.
She said: “Brexit is something that we discuss every day in Dublin, every day in Ireland, in fact it's on everyone's mind.
“A guillotine blade hanging ominously over the political, economic and social progress that has defined the island of Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement came into effect.”
She said there is cross-party agreement in Ireland to look to the EU and the UK to “protect the peaceful and borderless island we have worked so hard to create”.