We need cash to battle for Brexit, says Rees-Mogg
‘They want us crawling back to Brussels’
THE battle to take Britain out of the EU is ‘not yet won’, Jacob Rees-Mogg warned last night – as campaigners launched a fundraising drive to take on calls for a second referendum.
In an open letter yesterday, Tory MP Mr Rees-Mogg made a direct appeal for funds to help take on the lavishly resourced Remain campaign.
The prominent Eurosceptic described diehard Remainers as ‘cave dwellers who still want to stop the process’. But he warned that the pro-Brexit camp still had a fight on its hands to ensure Britain leaves the EU in a year’s time.
‘Remain campaigners have still not given up on their attempts to trap us inside the EU,’ he said. ‘They want us to go crawling back to Brussels, in what would be the biggest humiliation since Suez.
‘A betrayal of this kind would be the most almighty smash to the national psyche that could be imagined.
‘Despite our historic vote for change and independence in 2016, the battle is not yet won. Help us secure the clean, swift Brexit you voted for – and defeat the Remainers who do not believe in Britain.’
The intervention came as pro-Remain group Best for Britain prepared to launch a £500,000 campaign today aimed at forcing a second referendum. The group, bankrolled by US billionaire George Soros, has prepared a ten-week advertising blitz.
Campaign chairman Lord Malloch-Brown, a former Labour minister, said: ‘It has been 21 months since the Brexit referendum. Our research shows the British people – both Leave and Remain – are increasingly frustrated that they still do not know what Brexit means.’
Efforts to thwart Brexit are now being led by a string of wellfunded groups, including Best for Britain, Open Europe and the European Movement, as well as organisations such as the CBI and TUC.
But there is almost no organised campaigning to ensure the referendum result is respected.
Mr Rees-Mogg clashed publicly yesterday with former Tory chairman Lord Patten, who used a speech in London to mark a year until Britain leaves the EU to call for the UK to stay in the customs union.
The former EU commissioner said of Mr Rees-Mogg, whom he has known since he was aged eight: ‘I think he has allowed himself a bit to be taken over by his own image and caricature.’
In a speech of his own, with his mother Gillian in the audience, Mr Rees-Mogg said of Lord Patten: ‘I will only say this: when he was governor of Hong Kong, I greatly admired his efforts to argue for democracy. It is a great sadness that he wanted democracy for the people of Hong Kong but rejects it for the people of the United Kingdom.’