Cable attacks the elderly for voting Leave

SIR VINCE CABLE has been accused of “patronising” pensioners after claiming they “comprehensively shafted young people” by voting for Brexit.

The 74-year-old Liberal Democrat leader accused older people who backed Brexit of “masochism” and said their views had been “coloured by nostalgia from an imperial past”.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Sir Vince said that referring to Brexiteers as “martyrs” was dangerous.

He said: “To describe such masochism as martyrdom is dangerous. We haven’t yet heard about ‘Brexit jihadis’ but there is an undercurrent of violence in the language, which is troubling. We have already had the most fervent of Brexiteers, such as Nigel Farage, warning of civil unrest if the ‘will of the people’ is frustrated.

“Brexiteers may well be frustrated since the practical difficulties of Brexit, as well as the costs, could result in Brexit never happening. But the last thing the UK needs is further polarisation.”

He added: “Another concern is that the self-declared martyrs may be planning to sacrifice other people rather than themselves. It is striking that the martyrs appear predominantly elderly.”

Sir Vince said this “martyrdom of the old comes cheap, since few have jobs to lose” as he framed the Brexit debate as a battle between young and old.

He said: “The old have comprehensively shafted the young.

“And the old have had the last word about Brexit, imposing a world view coloured by nostalgia for an imperial past on a generation much more comfortable with modern Europe.”

But he was criticised by Frank Field, the 75-year-old Labour chairman of the pensions select committee and leading member of the Vote Leave campaign group. Mr Field told The Daily Telegraph: “Not only is he patronising, he is undermining his own base because he must have been elected by older voters.”