AN OXFORD MP and leading Liberal Democrat helped launch a campaign to demand a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

Layla Moran helped launch People’s Vote, which is supported by a cross-party selection of MPs, and actor Sir Patrick Stewart.

Ms Moran said she was keen to help the campaign and was invited because she was first elected in 2017. She had not been an MP when the referendum was held a year before.

While Sir Patrick, who visited Oxford in February as part of another anti-Brexit campaign, said ‘our country’s future is at stake and we will not stand idly by’.

Ms Moran, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, said the launch was designed to unite factions, including Leave voters, who wanted to have a say on any final Brexit deal.

She said People’s Vote’s aim was ‘not to repeat the same tactics of the last referendum’.

Ms Moran said: “You had groups that were quite disparate. Everyone is [now] talking about the same thing. The deal isn’t done yet. We think people deserve a vote on it.”

She said 51 per cent of people in the country want a vote on the Brexit deal but that it is dependent on what is included in it, which will become clearer later this year, and whether the Labour Party backs calls for a referendum.

She added: “Broadly speaking Oxford itself is predominantly Remain. There are people in Jericho and North Oxford who have still got Remain posters in their windows. In other parts of my constituency I know they are less supportive.

“Britain is great and it’s better if it cooperates with its allies rather than backing itself into a corner.”

In the Oxford City Council area, 72.4 per cent of people voted Remain, while 29.73 per cent wanted to leave the EU.

People’s Vote was launched at the Electric Ballroom, in Camden Town, London. It was hoped that would allow young people to be involved in the campaign, including teenagers not yet old enough to vote but whose futures could be shaped by Brexit.

The Conservatives’ Anna Soubry, Labour’s Chuka Umunna and the Green Party’s only MP and former Oxfordshire County Council councillor, Caroline Lucas, also attended the launch.

In front of a sympathetic pro-EU audience, Soubry said: “Us MPs made a decision that we would have a referendum. Since then, the people have been outside of the process.

“The way I see it is this: as Brexit unfolds and people see the reality of it, for the first time ever I think in any country’s history we have actually had a government that has said to its people that we are about to embark on a course that – which ever way you cut it, whatever deals comes out – you and your grandchildren will be less prosperous than you are now.

“This is really serious stuff.

Foreign secretary Boris Johnson, on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show, on Sunday jokingly used Sir Patrick’s starring role in the Star Trek films.

Mr Johnson added: “We will be able to boldly go again to areas that perhaps we’ve neglected over the last 45 years.”

One of the country’s leading advocates for Brexit, Mr Johnson, said: “On the contrary, friendly, wonderful places where we can renew old friendships, rebuild relationships and develop fantastic new free trade deals.”