Vince Cable has thrown himself, and his party even deeper into the Brexit argument during a speech over the weekend
The Lib Dem leader was speaking to crowds at his party’s spring conference yesterday.
Cable slammed Brexit and the outcome of the EU referendum, claiming that the vote has started a “non-violent civil war” and that young people were going to feel the effects of the referendum for years to come.
Cable said: “Too many were driven by a nostalgia for a world where passports were blue, faces were white, and the map was coloured imperial pink.
“Their votes on one wet day in June, crushing the hopes and aspiration of the young for years to come. The excuse for this outrage – a vision of a global Britain signing lots of new trade deals – is a fraud. Far from opening our arms to the world, we will be tearing up preferential trade deals we already have with 27 countries in the EU and 74 outside it.”
His comments were met with a furious backlash Tory MEP Dan Hannan said: “Amazing that Vince Cable, who likes to portray himself as reasonable, casually dismisses 17.4m people as racists. Voting Leave was the opposite of nostalgia. We are breaking free from a declining trade bloc and embracing the growing markets across the oceans.”
Also Communities secretary Sajid Javid was among others who chipped in when he tweeted: “Vince Cable so wrong and disrespectful. Should be trying to bring country together, not seeking to tear it apart.”
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