Cable: Brexit vote was simply an erotic spasm

Leader’s speech labelled bizarre as he enrages the Brexiteers

VINCE Cable infuriated Brexiteers last night after it emerged he is planning to compare Brexit to an ‘erotic spasm’ in his conference speech today.

The Liberal Democrat leader will also describe leaving the EU as a ‘dream behind closed doors’ for Brexit ‘fundamentalists’.

Last night Brexiteers poured scorn on the speech, saying his remarks were ‘bizarre’ and an insult to democracy.

In his conference speech, Sir Vince is expected to say: ‘For the “True Believers” – the fundamentalists – the costs of Brexit have always been irrelevant.

‘Years of economic pain justified by the erotic spasm of leaving the European Union. Economic pain felt, of course, not by them, but by those least able to afford it.

‘And the latest piece of nastiness from Jacob Rees-Mogg – calling into question the right of Europeans to stay in Britain and of Britons to stay in Europe: creating unnecessary worry and insecurity for millions.’

He will add: ‘The public don’t mind what these people dream about behind closed doors – so long as their dreams don’t become nightmares for the rest of us.’

He will also say that people ‘felt sorry’ for Theresa May and call on her to show leadership and support a second referendum.

But Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: ‘Given the bizarre analogies used by Vince Cable, I hope he never accuses another politician of courting controversy to get a headline.

‘His remarks are a huge insult to the 17.4million people who voted to Leave the EU and those of us in Parliament who cherish and respect democracy.’

Mr Rees-Mogg said: ‘Is this the only way the Lib Dems can get anyone to pay the slightest attention to their otherwise dull conference?

‘Sir Vince is a thoroughly decent man so it is all rather sad that his leadership has descended to a cheap sound bite.’

Yesterday former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg told the conference that David Cameron was a good coalition prime minister but a bad Conservative one.

Sir Nick said that after ‘getting rid’ of the Lib Dems in 2015, Mr Cameron’s brief period of rule with a Tory majority was an ‘absolute disaster’. He also contradicted deputy Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson’s speech to the Lib Dem conference calling on the party to ‘own its failures’ during the coalition years.

He added that the party should stop ‘raking over the coals’ and accept the coalition was positive. Sir Nick said he was ‘proud’ of his record in government. He said: ‘You can’t go around constantly licking your wounds. You’ve got to broadly say whether you’re happy with the decisions you made and I emphatically am.’

‘There is this narrative hung round the Lib Dem party’s neck …that we sold our soul, merrily went along with a savage, ideological approach to austerity which deliberately penalised the poor. It is simply not true.’ He also said he could not be the British equivalent of French President Emmanuel Macron, who formed a centrist alternative to the main political parties with his En Marche movement.

‘I’d love to think some sort of British Macron would come charging over the horizon and save us all from Brexit,’ he said. ‘But the secret to these breakthrough characters is precisely that they arrive relatively unencumbered by baggage. New characters will emerge to lead that political renewal.’

Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller gave the conference’s keynote speech – but said she was not party political and had no desire to lead the Lib Dems.