Tony Blair and George Osborne can shut up about Brexit… their policies are why so many people voted Leave
Remainers think the voters got it wrong and Brussels knows best how to run our country
Along with the June 8 election fiasco and deep divisions over Brexit, the incidents triggered nervousness about Britain’s place in a troubled world.
Remainers pounced on this gloomy mood to pick away at Britain’s momentous decision just a year ago to sever 40 years with the European Union.
But it cannot be reversed or set aside. We are leaving the EU and only the most dismal defeatist could imagine we won’t flourish and prosper.
We are only in trouble if we allow those who are prepared to die in a ditch to sabotage the process.
Remainers such as ex-PM Tony Blair and ex-chancellor George Osborne — “The Master” and his apprentice — pay lip service to the referendum verdict and claim they respect democracy.
In fact they believe voters got it wrong and the unelected burghers of Brussels know better how to run Britain’s political and economic affairs than its own elected politicians.
You can see them nodding and cheering when purse-lipped EU chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker or Michel Barnier warn of the misery ahead as our economy crashes and burns.
The European Union is always right. Britain is always hideously wrong.
Yet it was probably Blair and Osborne who did more than anyone to persuade us to leave.
Blair sparked fury by opening the floodgates to uncontrolled mass immigration and branding as “racists” and “fascists” anyone who dared protest.
He now claims Brussels might, just might, offer concessions on free movement.
Why would they do that — unless they can suddenly see the threat from this human tide to the EU’s own survival?
MOST READ IN OPINION
Mr Osborne, now using his role as a newspaper editor to sabotage Brexit, is arguably even more culpable.
The architect of Project Fear actually increased support for Brexit with his laughable predictions of hellfire and damnation.
Far from plunging into World War Three, Britain grew and foreign giants including Google and Apple scrambled to invest. Now Mr Osborne’s own Treasury record is under fire.
In 2010, after The Crash, voters here and elsewhere were ready to accept real belt-tightening austerity to slash bloated borrowing and soaring national debt.
Instead, for electoral reasons, Mr Osborne chose austerity lite while leading voters to believe they were suffering great pain.
Like Gordon Brown, he rode a credit card consumer spree which boosted growth and jobs but left Britain with a sore head and stagnant wages.
He sucked millions of wealth creators into higher tax bands, hammered pensions and stalled the housing market.
“Austerity” may have been an illusion but, along with tuition fees, it was a key factor in last month’s collapse of the Tory vote.
Today, Britain faces an uncertain future not because of Brexit but because of our dangerously fragile economy.
The Office for Budget Responsibility — Osborne’s creation — last week warned the UK is more “vulnerable” to financial shocks than it was before the 2008 slump, thanks to his tax rises.
We didn’t “fix the roof when the sun was shining”.
National debt has TREBLED to £1.7trillion — and we are still borrowing every penny we spend, leaving our children and grandchildren to meet the cost — more than any Brexit bill or NHS rebate.
Even a small increase in interest rates will add tens of billions to interest payments.
Mr Osborne sees himself as a political thinker.
But he was wrong on the economy, he was wrong on Project Fear and he was wrong on quitting as an MP.
In All Out War, political journalist Tim Shipman quotes PM David Cameron seething over his Chancellor’s latest “omnishambles” budget.
“George has totally f***ed up,” says Cameron. “It’s completely his fault.”
Not much changes.
CHANCELLOR Philip Hammond came in for a lot of stick after blowing a hole in the Government’s public sector pay policy.
He recklessly opened the door to Labour’s union paymasters – and his own Cabinet big spenders – by suggesting voters are “weary of austerity”.
But he was right about train drivers. Anyone with half a brain, of any sex, could drive a modern train – as Southern Rail’s Neanderthal strikers prove whenever they bother to turn up for work.
They certainly don’t deserve the £75,000 pay offer – already rejected – just for staying awake.
That’s THREE times the rate for London bus drivers, who really do need to know what they are doing.
