In her own words, the hypocrisy of Baroness Remoan
FORMER newspaper editor Patience Wheatcroft was a key figure at Tuesday’s meeting of hardline Remainers in London. As City Editor of The Times, she was a vigorous opponent of Britain joining the euro. She maintained her anti-Brussels line as editor of the Sunday Telegraph, but campaigned against Brexit. Baroness Wheatcroft’s mysterious change of heart is graphically illustrated by her quotes from 2003 and 2016:
FROM THE TIMES, SEPTEMBER 2003:
‘The culture of the European Commission is so corrupt that, even after damning evidence of lying and fraud [in its statistical office, Eurostat] is produced, the European Commission president sees no reason for any senior members of his team to resign... In Brussels, shamelessness prevails. Even when forced, belatedly, to lift the lid on the long-running fraud at Eurostat, the commission chose to do so behind firmly closed doors, with mobile phones confiscated so that those allowed to read the condemnatory reports could not relay the contents to a wider audience. Transparency is not a concept with which Brussels is familiar. Those who dare to blow the whistle on the extraordinary way in which the commission runs its affairs, and our money, find that they pay with their job. ‘The European Court of Auditors has felt unable to approve the commission’s accounts for almost a decade... If a public company were run in such a way, the Serious Fraud Office would be on the case and investors would have been demanding the directors’ scalps years ago.
‘The members of the European Parliament are hardly well placed to hold the commission to account. They enjoy significantly higher salaries than their British counterparts and hospitality on a generous scale. A quick lunch in Brussels may be curtailed to as little as four courses.’ FROM THE EVENING STANDARD, APRIL 2016:
‘Call me a Eurosceptic but who wouldn’t be sceptical about the EU? This is an organisation which is regularly rapped by its auditors for “a persistently high level of payment errors”... What sane individual wouldn’t have qualms about a bureaucracy which seems set on intervening in all manner of things where it is not required? ‘There is no doubting that the EU is flawed. What commercially minded person could be anything other than appalled by a club that sees its members all having to make swingeing cuts and then blithely submits a significantly increased budget for itself? This, however, is not the time to tear up our membership card and stalk out. Instead, it is the opportunity to lead the radical reform of the organisation that is long overdue.’