Former British Prime Minister condemns ‘deceitful’ Brexit campaign

Former British Prime Minister John Major launched a blistering attack on Sunday on fellow Conservatives campaigning for a Brexit, as rivals traded economic claims in an increasingly tight race for the June 23 vote.

Major condemned the “deceitful” campaign by Vote Leave, the Conservative-led group pressing for Britain to leave the European Union, saying it was making “fundamentally dishonest” claims about the potential economic consequences.
His intervention followed an accusation by Boris Johnson, the former Conservative mayor of London, that voters “cannot trust” government promises that Britain would not be forced to contribute to any future eurozone bailouts.
There are less than three weeks left in a race that opinion polls show is on a knife edge, raising the prospect of Britain becoming the first country to leave the 28-nation bloc.
The average of the last six polls calculated by the What UK Thinks research project on Sunday put both sides at 50 percent, excluding undecided voters. The “Remain” camp previously had a slight lead.
The economic consequences of staying in or leaving the EU is one of the key battlegrounds of the campaign, which is being fought between two main groups, both dominated by members of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives.
Cameron’s “Remain” camp has raised the prospect of a recession and job losses in the event of a Brexit, while the IMF and the governor of the Bank of England have also warned of the economic risks.
Cameron warned this weekend that mortgages could also cost up to £1,000 ($1,450) a year more if Britain left the EU.
Vote Leave, the official Brexit camp, countered with a claim that 300,000 jobs could actually be created by forging new trade deals outside the European single market.
It has also claimed that an extra £100 million could be freed up for the state-run National Health Service (NHS) by ending Britain’s contributions to the EU budget.
This prompted Cameron to accuse the Brexit camp on Saturday of “writing cheques they know will bounce.”
Major went further in an angry BBC interview on Sunday, accusing his fellow Conservatives in Vote Leave of making claims “they know to be inaccurate.”
“This is a deceitful campaign,” he said. “I am angry about the way the British people are being misled.”
Major, who was prime minister from 1990 to 1997, also condemned the focus on limiting the numbers of European citizens coming to Britain to work, saying it was “verging on the squalid.” Johnson and other senior figures in Vote Leave hit back with an open letter to Cameron, warning that staying in the EU risked trying “tying ourselves to a broken eurozone economy.”
Britain is not a member of the single currency.

Source: Arab News