This morning's Broadcasting House saw Brexit being discussed during the paper review (with a balanced-sounding panel on the subject).
Paddy always likes to keep things tied to what's in the papers ("Stick to the papers!") but, unusually, broke his own rule today by twice pushing a theme no one else was discussing and which didn't seem to be in any of the papers under discussion:
Here's a question that I think Radio 4 listeners would like to know, that should be answered by...I don't know if you can answer it...Should our parliament have a vote on the Brexit deal? So, in other words, yes, Brexit does mean Brexit but the shape of the deal - which will have very important things in it - should our parliamentarians have a vote?
His press panel bit on that slightly before getting into a lively debate about fishing quotas and the EU. Paddy, pursuing his original line, responded...and then moved on to a new subject:
And then we come back to the point about when do MPs get to review all this material. Now, Andrew Pierce,...
Now, I'm (perhaps controversially in these parts) quite a Paddy fan but even I could smell something fishy about his random-seeming interventions there. Our Eurovision-obsessed BH presenter sounded as if he was singing from the same Abba sheet music as Mark Mardell today. (The Brexit-voting United Kingdom jury duly awards him nil points).
Interesting LBC's Shelagh Fogarty, in responding to Paddy's first question, said:
Well, my listeners on LBC, talking about that very question this week...It's amazing how many people who voted Brexit believe that is an attempt just to thwart Brexit and those who voted to Remain say 'Yes, yes, yes, we must have a vote!'
And Paddy seemed to be questioning, like Mark Mardell, from the standpoint of the latter (losing) side of the argument this morning.
