John Major weighs in to Brexit debate

Former prime minister John Major is deeply vexed over the over-optimism of Brexiteers.

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John Major gets stuck into Europe
(Image credit: 2017 Getty Images)

On Monday, the former prime minister John Major made a speech calling the debate over Britain's relationship with Europe "deeply dispiriting". He is particularly vexed at the "unreal and over-optimistic" hopes for Britain's future post-Brexit.

"A new trade deal with Europe will be hugely complex" and there is "little chance we will be able to match the advantages of the single market". EU demands that we pay them up to €60bn might be "contentious", but "the bill will be substantial: billions, not millions, and very unpalatable".

"If anyone should know about historic mistakes it's Sir John Major," thunders the Daily Mail, the man who "led us into the disastrous Exchange Rate Mechanism". So it's no surprise that "his speech was a tirade of negativity". Like Tony Blair and Michael Heseltine, Major epitomises "a deeply tarnished political class that has had its day but does not have the dignity to recognise the fact".

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Major is "quite right" to point out that a hard Brexit means "substantial barriers on exporting goods and services to Europe", counters Sean O'Grady in The Independent. If anything, he understates the risks. A hard Brexit will "leave many of us poorer and wreck the British social model", agrees the New Statesman's Stephen Bush.

But even if it does not, "it's not unpatriotic for the defeated side in an electoral contest to continue to hold to those beliefs after a loss". The most "corrosive and dangerous" post-referendum trend is the insistence from Leave supporters that "we all pretend that there are no risks, no doubts and that none of us voted to Remain on 23 June".

Dr Matthew Partridge

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri