Open Letter re EU referendum result

Dear Sir,

We wish to propose that, as a matter of extreme urgency and importance, the House of Commons appoints an independent judicial committee, comprised of senior Commonwealth judges, to review claimed deceptions in the campaigns leading up to the poll of 23 June 2016 on the UK’s membership of the European Union.

We view with profound concern the impact of the Brexit result on the life of the United Kingdom, its people, institutions and the Union itself.  Serious allegations have arisen in the public sphere that claims made in the course of the campaigns, in connection with issues such as funding and immigration, as well as inaccurate and misleading statements about the nature of the European Union, were used to procure votes.  The retraction of these claims has become a signal feature of the angry, divided and menacing post referendum world.

It is our view that if the claims in question (from either side) were indeed false or were used with the intention of deceiving voters (especially voters who would be most likely to suffer serious consequences as a result of such deception), this would have been directly equivalent to a contempt of Parliament; indeed, given its impact on the constitution of the United Kingdom, we think it is far more serious even than that.

In these circumstances, and given the advisory nature of this referendum, we suggest that Parliament appoints a panel of judges from Commonwealth states to review the claimed deceptions and their impact on voters and to report their findings to both Houses of Parliament- which is the ultimate arbiter on when article 50 should be implemented.  By allowing an independent, non-EU judicial panel to review the allegations in question, we can at last give voters the thing they should have been told in the first place: the truth.