It is clear to me and my reading of where we are today that there is absolute gridlock in our politics, and that gridlock shows no prospect of being resolved. It is unlikely to change as a consequence of the election campaign taking place within the Conservative Party. It is unlikely to be resolved by a general election. I do not believe that we should leave without a deal. That would be an extraordinary act of sacrifice, which is at odds with the country that we are, at odds with our history and at odds with our culture. I do not believe that we have any alternative but to extend article 50 to allow a referendum to take place, to allow us to begin the process of healing in this country. 

Because when we look at what has happened over these last few years, what we have seen is the principle of consent being taken away from us. Consent is an important principle in any democracy, but consent cannot be a coerced consent or a consent based on a deceit. It has to be a freely given and an informed consent. Over the last few years, we have seen the people who funded and were behind the 'leave' campaign face investigation after investigation. Fines have been levied, and we know the work of people like Cambridge Analytica, who have used dirty data in a way that is beyond the laws that we currently have and beyond the regulators that currently exist. The consent that was given three years ago by the people of this country is something that has been abused by the people who sought that consent. In doing so, they undermine not only the referendum that they themselves believe should be upheld, but they also undermine our democracy and our democratic institutions.

Our democratic institutions have suffered more abuse than I can remember in a lifetime, and I lived through the 1980s, which was a pretty rumbustious time if you were a young student on the left. But let me say this: when Nigel Farage describes Parliament Square as 'enemy territory', what on earth—what on earth does that say about somebody who demands a return of our sovereignty in a parliamentary democracy? And when national newspapers are able to describe our judiciary as 'enemies of the people', what does that say about recognising and respecting our democracy in this country? What it tells us is that those people do not respect our democracy. They do not care for our democracy. They care for undermining the very institutions that uphold our civilisation in this society. It is a political campaign, which is to undermine those things that we hold dear.

It began to unravel, of course, with President Trump telling the truth—before he was told not to—earlier this week. We have been able to see, over the last few years, that the will of the people is not to move forward in a way that was described some years ago. I hope that we can reset our politics and that we can conduct our public debate in this country without the intolerance, the prejudice, the bigotry, and even the violence and threats of violence that we've seen, the dark money, the foreign interference. The attempt to break our democracy and our democratic institutions is something that we must all stand together to, I hope, ensure that we will, over the next few years, be able to win an argument, not simply for a referendum, which I hope will provide a result upon which we can create firm foundations for a just society—a society that is a tolerant society, a society that, 75 years ago, people were fighting to preserve.

And when we remember the sacrifices of the 1940s, let us also remember what Her Majesty reminded us of earlier this week: that the 1940s led to more multilateralism and not less. It led to the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions. It led to the creation of the United Nations. It led to the creation, eventually, of the European Union. It led to all those institutions of international order that seek to preserve peace and to increase prosperity and justice for all of those people. Let us not simply win a vote in a second referendum, but let us win an argument for a very different sort of society in the future. Thank you.