Butt out, Mr Soros. You can keep your tainted money

THERE was a point during the referendum campaign when any faint, lingering doubts this paper may once have harboured over the wisdom of Brexit were laid completely to rest.

This was when it emerged that Goldman Sachs, the amoral, predatory American investment bank, had thrown its influence and vast resources behind the Remain campaign.

The moment was an epiphany, since it crystallised so clearly the manifold faults of the EU. Yes, the Common Market (as it used to be called) was founded from the noblest of motives — to spread brotherhood, peace and prosperity among nations so recently at war.

But over the decades, it had degenerated into an anti-democratic, unaccountable, unwieldy, protectionist bureaucracy, run by and for the benefit of international political and financial elites, as epitomised by Goldman Sachs.

Yesterday came another such revelatory moment, as details began to emerge of a secret dinner to plot the overthrow of Brexit.

It was hosted in London last week by the Hungarian-American billionaire financier George Soros — known as ‘the man who broke the Bank of England’ after he amassed more than £1 billion betting against the pound on Black Wednesday, 1992, when the British taxpayer lost £3.3 billion.

With him were three men who, with their obscene wealth and awesome sense of entitlement, are almost a parody of the unelected, unaccountable elites leading the charge to stop Britain leaving Europe.

One was Sir Martin Sorrell, head of the advertising agency WPP, who now has to get by on £48 million a year, after having to accept a pay cut from the £70 million he earned in 2015. Another was private equity financier Stephen Peel, former executive director of (you guessed it) Goldman Sachs.

The third was Lord Malloch-Brown, a foreign minister in Labour’s government of cronies and long-standing friend of Mr Soros, who has had his finger in any number of global pies from the World Bank and the United Nations to public relations for South American politicians.

The aim of last week’s clandestine dinner, to which six Tory donors were also invited, was nothing less than to mobilise the vast personal wealth and propaganda expertise of the guests behind a campaign to manipulate public opinion and pressurise MPs into bringing down Theresa May.

If successful, they would force an election or a second referendum that could reverse the result of the first.

They just don’t get it, do they? They don’t understand that one of the reasons so many people voted for Brexit is their resentment of this new, arrogant elitist class telling them how to lead their lives.

Indeed, the Mail believes the exposure of this plot by the elite can only strengthen the nation’s resolve to stand by the historic decision of June 2016, when voters declared they had had enough of being pushed around by Jean-Claude Juncker, Angela Merkel and their cronies.

Inflaming pro-Brexit feeling further, Lord Malloch-Brown yesterday sought to trivialise the significance of the referendum result.

With breath-taking condescension, he tried to make the case for a second referendum by telling an incredulous John Humphrys on the BBC’s Today programme: ‘It’s like being told let’s go to Cornwall for a beach holiday, it’s going to be sunny — and it rains every day. You are allowed to change your mind . . . People are allowed to reflect on whether they had anticipated these storms.’

His meaning couldn’t have been clearer: unlike the gilded elite he belongs to, voters were too stupid to understand the economic consequences of their decision; if only they had been adequately warned, they would have chosen to remain.

This paper has news for his unaccountable Lordship. Voters were warned — at enormous length and great expense to taxpayers — that leaving the EU would bring economic calamity on Britain.

Indeed, David Cameron and George Osborne mobilised all Whitehall’s resources behind Project Fear, sending an alarmist leaflet to every household and strong-arming ‘experts’ in every field — from the Governor of the Bank of England to academics, economists and business leaders — to bombard the electorate with scare stories about the perils of Brexit.

In an outrageously outlandish flight of fantasy, remember, a panic-stricken Mr Cameron even suggested that withdrawing from the EU could lead to genocide and a third world war.

Yet in spite of this barrage of Remainer propaganda, for which the Civil Service should hang its head in shame, 17.4 million Britons — more than had backed any political party or proposition in history — still trusted their instincts and voted to pull out.

Which brings us to another aspect of Brexit which Mr Soros and his money- obsessed friends simply fail to understand.

Leave aside that Project Fear’s prophecies of disaster (an ‘immediate and profound shock to the economy’ after a Brexit vote, with a deep recession, soaring unemployment and an emergency budget) have so far proved utterly groundless. Indeed, yesterday the Bank of England was forced to follow other forecasters in upgrading its predictions for UK growth over each of the next three years.

Forget, too, that there are strong grounds for continued optimism over the economy after Britain breaks free from the sclerotic bonds of Brussels, setting our trading sights on the wider world, where the IMF predicts 90 per cent of global growth will take place over the next ten years or so.

The truth inveterate Remoaners cannot grasp is that it was not wholly, or even principally, on economic grounds that the country voted to leave. No, the decision owed far more to a deep-seated human yearning to recover our national identity and independence by taking back sovereign control of our borders, laws, money and trade.

For this precious prize, voters were prepared to risk taking a knock to their standard of living, at least in the short term, should Project Fear’s scare stories prove true.

Indeed, in a rare moment of insight, that prince of hypocrites Sir Nick Clegg hit the nail on the head this week when he laid into EU officials, saying they had fuelled Brexit with their ‘ sneering disregard for the politics of identity and patriotism’.

‘It was a terrible misreading of what actually makes people tick,’ he said, while the architects of Europe’s borders-free Schengen zone were guilty of ‘shocking naivety’.

This paper could not put it better. Indeed, as we witness the unrest and political extremism spreading through Europe, in protest against the mass migration facilitated by Schengen, the big question now is how long the agreement can survive.

Even the future of the EU itself looks far from assured, with President Macron of France and Mrs Merkel’s new coalition partners in Germany pushing for ever- closer union, while in a growing number of countries in Europe, the people become more vocal in their craving for greater national independence.

One thing’s for sure. If British voters were not swayed by the fear of being hit in their pockets, they are even less likely to be influenced by Mr Soros and his co-conspirators. That stands true no matter how much of their wealth and ingenuity these billionaires may throw into organising anti-Brexit youth rallies, flooding social media with EU propaganda or schmoozing MPs.

What they propose is an insult to British democracy, as offensive as Russia’s alleged attempt to sway the American elections in Donald Trump’s favour.

Indeed, it is greatly to the credit of the six Tory donors asked to last week’s dinner that they apparently wanted nothing to do with the campaign.

They, at least, could see that striving to destabilise the Government and bring down Mrs May raises a spectre far more economically damaging than Brexit could ever be, with the nightmare prospect of a hard-Left prime minister and a Marxist chancellor in Downing Street.

The Mail has a message for Mr Soros: butt out of our politics. We don’t want your tainted money — and stop interfering with our democracy.

It is outrageous that you are shovelling cash into such groups as the inaptly named Best For Britain, the European Movement and the All-Party Parliamentary Group On EU Relations — packed with the likes of the hysterical Anna Soubry, the petulant Lord Adonis, Chuka Umunna and the rest of the usual suspects on the extreme Remoaner fringe.

Whether you understand it or not, the people of this country realise that if we were to reverse our decision now, crawling back to the EU with our tails between our legs, we would be the laughing stock of the world, utterly at the mercy of Brussels and the elite who run the show.

That might suit you, Mr Soros, Goldman Sachs and the advertising chief Sir Martin, struggling to get by on that £48 million a year. But for the patriotic people of Britain who have our country’s interests at heart, there can be no going back.