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Deciding Brexit with one public vote was ‘irresponsible’, says Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins slams David Cameron over Brexit. Photograph: PA/TNE. - Credit: Archant
Brexit critic and ethologist Richard Dawkins has slammed former prime minister David Cameron for allowing the future of the UK to be decided by one vote.
In an interview with The Sun, the Oxford professor said it was 'irresponsible' to put the vote to the public.
He said, putting aside Remain and Leave arguments to one side, the future of our country and Europe itself should not have been decided by a single referendum.
He said: 'What I think about Brexit is that it was wrong to determine the future of our country and of Europe for the long term, for decades, maybe even for longer, on the basis of one vote, on one day, in June 2016.
'When people change their minds, if you look at the opinion polls they fluctuate all the time.
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'If you take a vote one day, that's all very well we do that in general elections but we know that at the most, five years, we can have another go, we can change our minds again.
'This was an incredibly irresponsible decision by David Cameron.'
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Dawkins slammed Cameron for appeasing the UKIP with a vote that he thought he could win.
'I'm not talking about whether Brexit itself is right or wrong, but the decision to allow a referendum on such a momentous thing, a long-term thing, on one day, to be decided by the entire electorate rather than in a representative democracy by parliament was an irresponsible decision he took because he thought he'd win.'
'He thought Remain would win, he was confident it would win.
'He was simply trying to see off the UKIP wing of his own party.
'It was a very very irresponsible thing for Cameron to do and we're going to live with the consequences for decades.'
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