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Ken Clarke said Theresa May's Brexit could be a 'disaster'
The three-time Tor leadership candidate also laid into Brexiteers who are living in an “unrealistic fairyland” believing Britain’s exit from the European Union will not come without its difficulties.
He said Prime Minister Theresa May would go down as a “disaster” in British politics history if she failed to deliver a good Brexit.
The former chancellor’s blistering attack comes just days after he defied the will of the people and voted against triggering Article 50.
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Ken Clarke said Enoch Powell would be disappointed in Brexit
If Mrs May succeeds, she will start getting into the list of great prime ministers, and if she fails she will be blamed and be in the Tony Blair, David Cameron class of people who were a disaster
Ken Clarke
He claimed that Mrs May had become “fixated” about the “immigration bit” during her Brexit negotiations.
Speaking to The Times, he said: “If Mrs May succeeds, she will start getting into the list of great prime ministers, and if she fails she will be blamed and be in the Tony Blair, David Cameron class of people who were a disaster.
“I compare it to the Iraq war. That was the last time I stuck my neck out in supporting a really unpopular cause – 70 per cent of the British public were in favour of the invasion and most of the Conservative Party was in a patriotic fury.
“Within 12 months you couldn’t meet a member of the public who had ever known anybody who was in favour of it.
"The public won’t blame their fellow citizens for voting in the referendum, they will blame the government of the day.”
He claimed the Conservative Party had been driven into delivering policies they do not believe in because of Brexit.
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Tony Blair faced a massive backlash over the Iraq War
REMOANERS: These people hate BREXIT!
Mon, January 16, 2017
Remainers are finding it hard to accept Brexit.
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NICK CLEGG
Mr Clarke said: “I don’t think the Tory party knows where it is going now. “We have taken up all these positions since June 23 but they don’t hang together.
“The bit that worries me is the anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant bit . The overwhelming majority of British people are not xenophobic or racist but there are more around than there used to be.”
The Tory rebel also claimed Enoch Powell would have be upset if he came back to find out Britain was abandoning the free-trade deal with the Brussels club.
Talking about the late Tory MP, Mr Clarke told the BBC: “I think we would be amazed having seen the way the Conservative party went in the 1970s. When he was in the House of Commons, as a Conservative when we joined the European Union, he passionately argued against it.
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David Cameron stepped down as PM after Britain voted to leave the EU
“We used to have proper Parliamentary debates then that went on a bit. Were he to come back… he’d be rather upset to find we are giving up the principles of free trade.
“If he was here he would probably find it amazing to believe that his party had become Eurosceptic and rather mildly anti-immigrant in a strange way in 2016.
“I’m afraid on that I haven’t followed them and I don’t intend to do so.”
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