Honestly! EU fibs will drive us all crazy

Mischievously, labour MP Mike Gapes greeted the choice of the far-left Guardian columnist seumas Milne as Jeremy corbyn’s spin doctor by saying: ‘is the appointment of an unreconstructed stalinist, rather than an engaging neo-Trotskyist, a move to the Right?’

By the time we get the chance to vote in the EU referendum, I fear we’ll have been sent mad by the endless contradictory statistics, facts and — above all — lies being pumped out by the rival campaigns.

the yes lobby, for example, has long argued that millions of British jobs depend on us staying in.

An early propagandist was ardent europhile Nick Clegg, who in 2011 said: ‘there are three million of our fellow countrymen and women whose jobs rely directly on our participation and role and place in what is, after all, the largest, borderless single market.’

the then Lib Dem leader based this bald assertion on an academic report from 2000.

however, we now learn that we were misled by Calamity Clegg. During an EU debate organised by the Spectator magazine last week, one of the report’s authors, Iain Begg, now a professor at the London School of economics, said there had been a ‘persistent misrepresentation’ of the jobs figure by the pro-Brussels lobby.

Will Straw (son of former home Secretary Jack and a failed Labour candidate), who is a key figure in the PRO-EU Britain Stronger In europe campaign, has also admitted that three million jobs do not ‘depend’ on staying in the EU.

So much for honesty: the bogus claim is still on the campaign’s website a week later.

I guarantee that this won’t be the last big fib we are fed about the UK’s membership of the EU.