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If Brexit is about listening to the people, why hasn’t Boris called it off for coronavirus?

New polls show that the majority of voters across all age groups want Brexit paused while the country recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic – and the economic damage it will cause. Denis MacShane writes

Monday 30 March 2020 10:54 BST
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The prime minister told the nation it would enter into lockdown via a televised speech on 23 March
The prime minister told the nation it would enter into lockdown via a televised speech on 23 March

Why is Downing Street insisting that the nation’s top priority has to be breaking as many links as possible with Europe instead of focusing all government resources on coronavirus?

With the prime minister sick with Covid-19 - as well as his chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost - surely the time has come for Boris Johnson to practise a little political distancing and lock down the more fervent of his anti-European associates like Michael Gove and Dominic Raab.

A new poll shows two out of three voters want Johnson to put Brexit on hold until the coronavirus crisis, now expected to run well into the summer or even later, is resolved.

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