BREXIT MOANERS TURN NASTY

BRITAIN should stay in the EU because older people who backed Brexit will “die off”, a leading Remain supporter suggested yesterday.

The jibe by former Labour minister Lord Malloch-Brown, 64, was attacked immediately as “unhelpful” and “rude”.

The one-time United Nations deputy secretarygeneral chairs the antiBrexit Best for Britain campaign part-funded by the billionaire financier George Soros.

He said the young were “all really angry with older people. They feel utterly

betrayed – and they feel that the actuarial rules of life are moving in their favour and that within a matter of four, five, 10 years, they are going to be an overwhelming majority in this country.”

He agreed, laughing, with a podcast interviewer that this would happen “as all the Brexiteers die off... because under 55 there was a huge majority in this country [for Remain], tailing off as you got to 55”.

Best for Britain, which plans to step up its campaigning in coming weeks, wants MPs to vote against the terms of Theresa May’s potential Brexit deal with Brussels and the option of staying in the EU to be put on the agenda.

Unhelpful

Conservative MP Ben Bradley, the party’s 28-year-old vice chairman for youth, said: “It’s incredibly naive to think you can lump people into one box or another and say young people vote Remain and older people vote Leave.

“It’s certainly not the case in large parts of the North, including my constituency of Mansfield.

“Equally, it’s rude and unhelpful to suggest you’re just waiting for old people to die off.”

Mr Bradley said the referendum result could not be ignored and the task now was to talk about the aims for Brexit and how it could be good for Britain, rather than “talking it down and trying to be divisive, young versus old, or whatever”. Senior Conservative MP and Vote Leave official Bernard Jenkin said: “It’s a matter of fact that people tend to change their voting behaviour as they get older and I think Lord Malloch-Brown is being very dismissive of the arguments.

“Vote Leave won the argument during the referendum and the Government comprehensively lost it. If there were to be another referendum I’m confident we would win again, with a much bigger majority.”

Matthew Elliott, who was chief executive of Vote Leave, said: “It’s a complete myth that it’s just old people who voted for Brexit.

“It’s like when people say ‘everybody in London voted remain’ whereas more people voted to leave in London than voted for Labour mayor Sadiq Khan.”

Mr Elliott added: “If the Leavers who now support Remain exist, where are they in this debate?”

He also said Lord Malloch-Brown was being “wildly optimistic” to suggest that the Remain camp’s chances of overturning the referendum were as high as 40 per cent. Best for Britain is targeting its action at the “meaningful vote” Parliament is set to have later this year on the terms of any deal Mrs May strikes with Brussels.

Lord Malloch-Brown, who said he was motivated by the feelings of his children, their friends and the youth groups his campaign is working with, wants MPs to have the option

of staying in the EU if the deal would clearly make Britain worse off.

But he said it would also be “a perfectly reasonable outcome” if Mrs May’s deal was defeated, leading to a new Tory leader who put the package to a second referendum.

“I agree about respect for the will of the people but democracy is several things and one is the right to hear new facts, the right to change your mind, to have a fresh vote.”

It also emerged yesterday that anti-Brexit activists plan concerted action within weeks to try to change Brexiteers’ minds and preserve the closest possible links with the EU.

Finalising

Best for Britain is said to be exploring holding a rock festival in London this summer. It is also finalising plans for a billboard campaign and a mobile phone app to mobilise supporters to lobby MPs.

It is drawing inspiration from Jeremy Corbyn’s backers in the hard-Left group Momentum which used social media effectively in last year’s general election.

Previous research has shown a majority of 18 to 34-year-olds voted remain and a majority of those 55 and over voted leave. But economic backgrounds were also a factor with working-class people more likely to vote leave than their middle-class contemporaries.