Remainer Hague: I’d vote Leave now
Country can’t go in circles, insists ex-Tory leader
FORMER tory leader William Hague yesterday said he would vote for Brexit in a second referendum – as he warned against Britain ‘going around in circles’.
lord Hague, who was a leading voice in the Remain campaign, dismissed the idea of another vote as ‘divisive’.
But he said he would be ‘more likely to vote leave’ if a second poll was held, saying the country must ‘get on with it’.
in the run-up to the referendum last year, the former Foreign Secretary warned leaving the EU risked ‘the fragmentation of the Western world’.
Only weeks before the vote, he said the EU was the ‘lesser of evils’ compared to the instability Brexit would mean, and the cost to jobs and business.
But he said yesterday that holding another poll would mean saying to millions of leavers they had ‘got it wrong’. Asked on the BBC’s Radio 4 today programme on how he would vote on Brexit now, lord Hague said: ‘ First of all, i would vote not to have another referendum. i think it would be really the most divisive thing you could do. ‘i would be more likely actually to vote to leave because i don’t think a country can go round in circles. You cannot be leaving the EU in 2016 and remaining in it in 2018. Once we have made a decision we have to stick to that decision and implement it as best we can. i don’t think it would be very good for this country to go through this entire argument again.
‘imagine going back to the people of this country and saying, “you got this wrong in the referen- dum – you may have turned out in record numbers and most of the country voted to leave but nevertheless we think you got it wrong and we are going to run it again”. imagine the hate-filled campaign that would divide this country. i do not think that is a price worth paying.’
He follows in the footsteps of several senior tories who backed Remain but have since endorsed leave. treasury minister liz truss said she had changed her mind after the dire warnings of Project Fear failed to materialise.
She said: ’the facts have changed and i’ve changed my mind. What we have seen since the Brexit vote is our economy has done well, we haven’t seen the dire predictions come to pass.’
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has also changed his mind because of the ‘arrogance’ of the EU in the negotiations.
Mr Hunt said he had become a ‘late convert’ to Brexit, adding: ‘Frankly the way the EU Commission has behaved since the referen-
‘Most divisive thing you could do’
dum has been very disappointing. it’s that arrogance that we’ve seen.
‘Every time we make really generous and open-hearted offers, it’s not enough.’
liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable is among those Remainers in Parliament to have demanded a second vote.
A leading funder of a leave campaign group last night denied its cash came from Russia.
the Electoral Commission said it was investigating the source of millions of pounds Arron Banks used to fund the leave.EU campaign.
Officials said they were examining whether he breached campaign finance rules and were looking at the ‘true source’ of three loans worth £6 million.
the commission is also probing whether Better for the Country ltd, a company that lists Mr Banks as a director and worked from the same office as leave.EU, was acting as an ‘agent’ when it donated £2.3 million to five registered campaigners.
Commission spokesman Bob Posner said: ‘Questions over the legitimacy of funding provided to cam- paigners at the referendum risks causing harm to voters’ confidence.’
labour MP Ben Bradshaw used legal protections for MPs in the Commons to make allusions between Mr Banks’s activities and allegations about Russian interference in the US Presidential elections.
But Mr Banks said his only involvement with Russia was a ‘boozy sixhour lunch’ with an ambassador. He added: ‘the leave.EU campaign was funded by myself, [donor] Peter Hargreaves and the general public.’