Juncker attacks Johnson referendum ‘lies’

JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER has attacked the “lies Boris Johnson and others” spread during the Brexit referendum and said it was “bulls--t” that the European Commission was to blame for Britain leaving the EU.

Brexit could have destroyed the EU and split Europe forever, the outgoing president of the European Commission said in a farewell speech in Brussels yesterday.

Asked what the EU could learn from Brexit, Mr Juncker said: “Don’t always give the impression that the commission is responsible for the result of the referendum. It is not.” He added: “It is nonsense. Bulls--t as they are saying.”

Mr Juncker blamed negative press coverage and “the lies Boris Johnson and others were spreading around” during the 2016 campaign. He said he should have intervened but did not at David Cameron’s request.

He said: “Brexit is a shame and it is the most difficult problem we have ever had to face. I don’t think that Brexit is in the interest of Britain or the European Union. All of us will pay the price.

“It could have brought the house down, acted as a catalyst for others and split Europe forever, but it did not.

Unity has prevailed,” said Mr Juncker, who is nearing the end of his five-year term. Mr Juncker said David Cameron told him at the G20 summit in Brisbane in 2014 that he planned to hold the referendum. “That is when I knew, no matter how good a campaigner he was, he would lose it and I told him so. He didn’t believe it but it happened.

He lashed out at accusations that the commission was anti-democratic. “I am an elected guy,” he said. He said he had won numerous elections in his career and that a number of his commissioners were former prime ministers. Only Lord Jonathan Hill, the former UK commissioner, had not been elected.