Cable warns of ‘Brexit jihadis’
Lib Dem leader blasts back at hardliners who ‘embrace pain of suffering as badge of honour’
PANICKING anti-EU hardliners risk turning into ‘Brexit jihadis’ in the face of growing evidence that cutting all ties with Brussels will leave British families worse off, Sir Vince Cable has warned.
In a powerful intervention, the Liberal Democrat leader attacks Brexit ‘martyrs’ who now admit quitting the single market will damage the economy – but boast they don’t care.
And Cable, 74, accuses the elderly who voted in large numbers to quit the EU knowing they had ‘no jobs to lose’ of ‘shafting the young’ – who have everything to lose.
Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, he says there has been a ‘subtle change’ in the arguments used by leading Brexiteers.
‘They used to tell us about the money that would be saved for the NHS and jobs created through new trade agreements,’ he writes.
But now they ‘largely accept’ that the economy would suffer.
Instead of denying it, they are ‘embracing economic pain as a price worth paying… almost as a badge of honour’.
Press reports of ‘martyrs for Brexit’ mark a ‘worrying’ new trend, says Cable.
‘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.’
Most of the Brexit ‘martyrs’ are pensioners after the young voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU, says Sir Vince.
He adds: ‘The martyrdom of the elderly comes cheap since few have jobs to lose.
‘ The old have comprehensively shafted the young.’
Cable denounces Brexit Tory cheerleader Iain Duncan Smith for his demand last week that unpaid UK parliamentary trade envoys who have criticised Brexit should be fired. ‘This is how McCarthyism started,’ says the former Cabinet Minister.
‘At this rate, we will have Brexit thought crimes before long,’ he adds.
He says one of the trade envoys on the Brexiteers’ ‘hit list’ is crossbench peer Lord Janvrin, the Queen’s former private secretary, singled out for speaking up for EU nationals in the UK.
Cable says those who want a hard Brexit are ‘becoming desperate’.
‘Rather than closing down dissent, they might like to explain how Britain can flourish if it is cut off from the world’s largest single market,’ he adds.
‘For the Brexit martyrs, paradise beckons... No longer Project Fear but Project Near. After that it will be Project Here.’
And he questions polls which claim people are content to see living standards and jobs decline in the name of Brexit. ‘I don’t encounter people running around saying “please make me poorer”, or “please sack me”,’ he says.
‘This undercurrent of violence is troubling’