Remoaner hysteria reaches fever pitch
CRANKING up the Remoaner rhetoric to a new pitch of hysteria, the head of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development predicts Brexit will be ‘ like the Blitz, except fortunately not the Blitz’.
Leave aside Angel Gurria’s nonsensical choice of words. Though he disingenuously insists all he wants is a soft and ‘seamless’ Brexit, his clear purpose is to frighten British voters into changing their minds.
Indeed, this intention is spelt out in his organisation’s report, which suggests reversing the decision to withdraw in a second referendum would have a ‘significant’ positive impact on our economy, while Brexit without a deal would wipe up to £40billion off UK growth by 2019.
Why we should believe these predictions is anyone’s guess. After all, this is the same OECD – repeatedly proved wrong – which warned of an immediate ‘major negative shock’ after a Leave vote (before having to backtrack when the economy refused to stop growing).
Doesn’t this latest scaremongering also smack more of desperate propaganda than cool economic analysis?
Instead of trying to whip up panic in Britain, Mr Gurria should surely be lecturing Brussels on its duty to press ahead with a mutually beneficial trade deal.
Indeed, it becomes clearer by the day that Europe’s negotiators are betraying the 500million people whose interests they purport to represent.
They may pretend they are delaying trade talks because they first want firm guarantees for EU citizens based in the UK (which Britain has offered) and agreement on the Irish border (which will depend on the nature of a trade deal).
But yesterday the mask slipped. As a close ally of Angela Merkel all but confirmed, the real sticking point is money. The fact is that the EU is desperately worried about how it will fill the gap in its budget when its second largest contributor leaves, calculating that the longer it keeps us waiting for trade talks, the more cash it can extort from us.
In other words, the negotiators are more concerned about funding their own bureaucracy and lavish perks than with the interests of countless farmers, factory hands and others all over Europe whose jobs depend on access to British markets.
Don’t take the Mail’s word for it that our partners need us more than we need them. Yesterday, even Bank of England Governor Mark Carney – the former cheerleader for Project Fear – admitted as much, when he said losing access to the City would cause huge problems for our partners, while UK banks are better prepared than the EU’s for a future without a deal.
Isn’t this the message Mr Gurria should be ramming home to Brussels? Meanwhile, wouldn’t he do well to remember that the Blitz was Britain’s finest hour – and Europe’s darkest?