‘It could be over for Theresa by Friday ... if crunch Cabinet summit collapses’
THE revelation by former White House staffer Ben Rhodes that British Government sources prompted ex-President Barack Obama’s prereferendum declaration that the UK would be “at the back of the queue” for a trade deal with the United States if it left the EU should come as no surprise to anyone.
Quite apart from the odd turn of phrase (Americans stand in lines, not queues), the threat was all of a pattern with other predictions of doom made by pro-Remain establishment factions before the vote in June 2016.
Wrong
The Treasury, for example, told us that the UK economy would enter immediate recession if we voted Leave. The International Monetary Fund said that it would contract by as much as 9.5 per cent. Both were proved spectacularly wrong. There was no recession. The British economy continues to grow and employment is at a record high.
The exercise to scare Brits into voting Remain became known as ‘Project Fear’. Despite the best efforts of the Remain campaign, it proved a failure. People decided they had had enough of being governed by unelected EU Commissioners and paying handsomely for the dubious privilege. They voted decisively to Leave.
One might have thought the Europhile elite would have learned that British people do not take kindly to being browbeaten. This would not appear to be the case.
Project Fear 2.0 has now started. The last few days have seen a rash of announcements by big businesses, many of them EU-based, threatening to leave the UK unless we remain closely aligned to European regulations and customs arrangements.
The object is simply to frighten Britons into thinking we can’t survive if we cut ourselves adrift from the EU. In fact, the reverse is true.
The UK is the world’s sixth largest economy and a major consumer of EUmanufactured goods. We are in a strong negotiating position. Project Fear 1.0 proved an embarrassing failure, as Barack Obama found out. And so, once again, will Project Fear 2.0.