GORDON Brown has savaged David Cameron over Brexit, accusing his successor of being too “lazy” to strike a deal with Europe that could have avoided it.
In a passionate denunciation, Mr Brown said the former Tory Prime Minister and his colleagues simply “thought they would win without a fight”.
He said: “They didn’t even put the right arguments. They didn’t put a positive case for Europe and we lost the referendum, and that’s why we’re in this position, I’m afraid.”
Mr Brown, who lost the 2010 election to Mr Cameron, made the comments while arguing against a no-deal Brexit at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
He said there had been a host of substantial concessions his successor could have extracted from Brussels in early 2016, when he was negotiating a package of reforms.
Signed off in February, the deal was widely regarded as underwhelming and failed to address voter concerns over immigration, paving the way for the Leave vote four months later.
The former Labour PM said that if Mr Cameron was "honest" he would have to admit he could have done more, but failed to put in the effort.
Mr Brown said he was not condemning people who voted Leave because they wanted a change in their lives, but trying to understand what lay behind it.
READ MORE: SNP boss faces sack after independence referendum 'Plan B' blocked
He said: “If David Cameron, let’s be honest about this - he’s publishing a book in the next few weeks - if he was honest, he could have negotiated a far better deal with the European Union that would have dealt with many of their [voter] fears, that dealt with the fears about immigration, their fears about sovereignty.
“In Germany, you can’t be an immigrant unless you are registered for work. You can’t stay in Belgium after nine months if you haven’t got a job. In Switzerland, which is covered by freedom of movement, all jobs have got to be registered in unemployment areas at the labour exchange. In France, you can’t have social dumping. In other words, you can’t be paid Latvian wages if you’re a Latvian working in France.
“He could have done all these things, and he could have dealt with some of the concerns that people had around the country about wages, and everything else.
“He could have dealt with the sovereignty question. You could have had a law passed in parliament that said any ruling of the European Court that offended the principles of the Treaty of Maastricht which required national identity to be taken into account, any ruling of the European Court would not be accepted in the British Isles if it offended these principles.
“He could have done all these things. But they were lazy. They thought they would win it without a fight. They didn’t even put the right arguments. They didn’t put a positive case for Europe and we lost the referendum, and that’s why we’re in this position, I’m afraid.”
The remarks were greeted with the loudest applause at the event.
Mr Cameron, who quit the morning after losing the EU referendum, is to due to publish his autobiography next month.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel