To understand Brexit you would “need to go and sit with a psychiatrist”, according to the founder of Italy’s leading political party.
Beppe Grillo, who created the populist Five Star Movement, was speaking exclusively to Sky News on the eve of British MPs’ vote on the EU withdrawal agreement.
Mr Grillo said the Brexit crisis was “changing the definition of democracy” but that if the UK was to hold a second referendum on leaving the European Union it would be “the death of democracy”.
“If you have referendum after referendum, it’ll never end,” he said.
“A second vote will simply lead to discussion of a third, and then a fourth, and then you are always going to just flip-flop between the side that feels let-down.”
Mr Grillo, 71, is one of Italy’s best-known stand-up comedians. His wild, wayward hair and expressive face make him one of the most recognisable people in Italian entertainment.
But in 2009, he channelled that personality into politics.
He founded the Eurosceptic, populist Five Star Movement in 2009 and by Italy’s 2018 general election, it had won the most seats in parliament, campaigning on an anti-Eurozone platform and anti-establishment feeling.
“People were angry,” Mr Grillo told Sky News.
“Our Five Star movement gave them the right to shout, the right to right to scream ‘go away!’, the right to say ‘enough’ to what was happening in parliament, and ‘enough’ to career politicians.”
Mr Grillo has never stood for a political seat, preferring to work on his party’s ideology from behind the scenes.
The Brexit vote suited Five Star’s anti-EU sentiment, which claimed that Italy was being left behind in a “two-speed Europe”.
In the European Parliament, Mr Grillo led his party into an alliance with the UK Independence Party.
Before Brexit, he supported then UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s leave campaign and, after the vote, he said Brexit would bring about an “era-defining change” in the way Europe worked, possibly paving the way for further splits.
But now he is uncertain about Brexit’s future.
He says, “You’d have to be a mind-reader to know what would happen.
“Everything is constantly changing, it’s difficult to predict.
“And what is said one day, doesn’t mean the same, the next.”
Mr Grillo told Sky News that he hoped, whatever the outcome of MPs’ vote later, it would not stop Britain from leaving the EU.
“This is not just a vote,” he said.
“This is a transition, a change in how we see democracy.
“We were always told things had to be a certain way.
“But in my opinion that’s changing – and not only in the UK.
“Things are being shaken up across the world.”
“But if a country goes through a referendum and then that decision is reversed – well, that challenges the very basis of democracy.”