‘Failure on Brexit would be like Suez’
FAILING to deliver a full break from the EU would be the biggest “national humiliation” for Britain since the Suez crisis, Jacob Rees-Mogg will warn Theresa May this week.
In a speech tomorrow to mark one year until Brexit, the leading Eurosceptic Tory MP will sound the alarm about the Prime Minister’s compromises in negotiations with Brussels.
He will warn Mrs May that failure to deliver on Brexit would be comparable to the foreign policy fiasco over the Suez Canal that wrecked Anthony Eden’s premiership in 1957.
He is expected to say: “What would that mean for this nation? If we were not to leave, if we were to find a transition bound us back in?
“Well it would be Suez all over again.
“It would be the most almighty smash to the national psyche that could be imagined.
Decline
“Suez affected the nation’s view of itself until Margaret Thatcher became prime minister.
“It infused throughout the body politic the view that the best we could do was manage decline.
“Margaret Thatcher tried to break away from that but it was such a strong feeling that once she had gone it seeped back again.
“It is still there and the Remainers are part of that group, who do not feel that we are able to do things for ourselves.
“Although countries across the globe can govern themselves, poor little Blighty cannot.”
Mr Rees-Mogg will also raise concerns about moves to continue free movement rules for EU citizens after Brexit.
He will say the open border policy has had a negative impact on Britain’s least well off because they “have found their jobs have been taken by migrants from the EU”.