Journalist David Lindsay has commented on the possibilities of the UK's withdrawal from the EU and the possible cancellation of Brexit.
Sputnik: Will the UK leave the EU on October the 31st?
David Lindsay: Leaving by October the 31st I’d say was now really quite unlikely, because the government has relented on this bill to prevent a no deal Brexit, so this bill will become law; therefore they will have to ask for a further extension to Article Fifty in order to secure another deal. How long that will be is presumably until the end of the calendar year, which is really quite a long time but we shall see.
In between that it is far more likely than not that there will be a general election, so all bets are well and truly off.
Sputnik: Could Brexit be cancelled?
David Lindsay: It hasn’t actually happened yet and we’ve been waiting for a very long time. It is a matter of never formally cancelling it and just putting it off and putting it off and putting it off, a formal cancellation would be a big ask and there would be a certain amount problems, there wouldn’t be serious civil disorder such as riots; but there would be problems on the streets and very serious problems within public opinion about doing that.
Just putting it off endlessly; which is just a very British way of doing things it must be said, that has been going on now for a very long time.
I don’t think the idea of a no deal Brexit bothers most people and I don’t think most people believe scare stories. There were not terrible food shortages and shortages of medicine or anything like that in the Britain of the 1960s and 1970s that was just not the case.
We don’t see any reason why we could not continue to maintain a perfectly reasonable standard of living, as we had by the standards of the time before we joined the EU, and as is maintained by countries outside the EU such as Norway or Switzerland, never mind further afield in the world beyond Europe, the people don’t believe these scare stories at all.
Sputnik: Who would win the next British general election?
David Lindsay: There’s going to be a hung parliament. As to who would be the largest party; I honestly cannot say, the lead that the Conservative Party currently has is smaller than the lead that it had at the beginning of the 2017 general election campaign, and by the end of that they ended up losing their overall majority.
I really do think that it is all to play for to be the largest party in that hung parliament between the Conservative and Labour parties, either of them could do it, none of them are going to win outright, but either of them could be the single largest party yet.
Views and opinions, expressed in the article are those of David Lindsay and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
