Farage suggests leavers should boycott any referendum offering choice between May's deal and remain
On Sky’s All Out Politics Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, said that the government did ever end up offering a referendum with a choice between remain and Theresa May’s deal (as Labour is proposing – see 9.35am), he would abstain. He said:
I tell you what I do resist - the very idea, that it appears Emily Thornberry [the shadow foreign secretary] is putting forward, that the referendum would be between remain and Mrs May’s deal, which is Brexit in name only. I have to tell you, in those circumstances, I would not campaign and I would not vote. Because it would not offer me Brexit.
When it would put to him that this would suit his opponents, Farage went on to suggest that leavers should organise a mass abstention, in the hope of delegitimising the result. “You have to have a certain level of turnout for any referendum to be valid,” he said.
Actually, that is not true. In most referendums in the UK there has been no turnout threshold, although, as Farage pointed out, in the 1979 referendum on Scottish devolution, there was a turnout threshold saying that the vote would only be valid if 40% of all registered voters, as well as a majority, voted yes. This was widely seen as a wrecking amendment and, although there was a narrow majority for devolution, the result was invalid because the turnout was not high enough.
