Delia Smith: ‘Everything about Brexit screams wrong’

Delia Smith speaks to the BBC's Andrew Marr. Photograph: BBC. - Credit: Archant

Delia Smith has reasserted her support for a People’s Vote, saying that it would be ‘more democratic’ to check with the people whether they really want the ‘chaos’ surrounding Brexit.

The television chef and Norwich City football club majority shareholder told the Marr show that the EU represented the ‘spirit of humanity coming together’ and said that she simply could not accept the result of the 2016 referendum.

She said that the vote had been called on a ‘whim’ to shut up Eurosceptics in the Tory party, and that no-one before the vote could have foreseen the ‘chaos’ which would follow.

Smith, who lives in a Leave voting constituency in Suffolk, denied this was about Leave or Remain voters being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

She told Andrew Marr: ‘I am quite a deep thinker, I think a lot, and everything in me screams, ‘this is wrong’.’

‘We’ve had 45 years of quite peaceful calm living – don’t we want to all go back to that? Why do we want all this?

‘It might take 10 years, it might take 20 years. Why does our country want all this when what we had before was so much better?’

Smith said a People’s Vote question should simply be a re-run of the 2016 referendum question – a ballot paper with an ‘in’ or ‘out’ option.

She added she would accept the result of the fresh referendum, saying that it would be ‘more democratic’ because the people would now know what the outcome would be.

‘At least they know they’ve got 20 years of chaos ahead of them.’