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Lord Bragg: ‘Brexiteers are a cult like the Moonies’

British broadcaster, critic and novelist Melvyn Bragg. Photograph: Colin McPherson/Corbis via Getty Images. - Credit: Corbis via Getty Images

Broadcaster Melvyn Bragg has hit out at ‘leading wimp’ David Cameron and the ‘squirearchal, hedge funding, over-privileged’ Brexiteers.

The South Bank Show host did not mince his words in a colourful interview that discussed the state of British politics in 2018.

The Labour peer said that responsibility for Brexit fell with former prime minister Cameron saying he was a ‘smarmy PR man’ who ‘ran a lousy campaign and then ran away’.

He explained to The House magazine: ‘He said he’d stay but ran away, he resigned from the Commons – we’ve never heard a pip or a squeak from him. He didn’t go on the Remain march, he didn’t do anything. Cameron could have saved his name by leading the Remain minority.’

MORE: Brexiteer: ‘Two years? I could negotiate Brexit in just 10 minutes!’

Bragg hit out at Cameron and his Conservative colleagues who now oppose the upper house because it is voting against government policy.

He said: ‘The stance of the Cameronites and duds like that is that ‘oh if they oppose us then we must abolish them’. What a witty, thoughtful, intelligent reaction to being opposed – ‘oh let’s abolish them’… Who the f*** does he think he is?’

Bragg’s criticism didn’t stop at David Cameron. He said the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage were ‘dangerous’.

MORE: Nadine Dorries just slammed May’s Brexit plan for the strangest of reasons

He explained: ‘People like Farage and Boris, some newspapers think ‘oh they make news, they’re so colourful’. They’re dangerous these people and so it turned out to be.’

Lord Bragg also called outspoken Brexit figure Sir James Dyson ‘greedy’ and ‘traitorous’.

‘As soon as he sees an opportunity, he goes to Singapore. Puts two billion in there when he could have done it here. Isn’t he rich enough?’

And on the Brexiteers he called them a ‘bunch of squirearchal, hedge funding, over-privileged people who think it’s going to be okay’.

He said: ‘They’re not going to suffer – not a bit of it. They don’t offer any evidence now. It’s ceased to be a programme or a process, it’s a cult. It’s a bit like the Moonies. They just believe it because they believe because they believe it.’

MORE: ‘You’re the losers now!’ – Presenter hits out at Brexiteer over People’s Vote

Bragg called on Theresa May to come out with an admission that Brexit would not make the country prosperous and to cancel Brexit. Failing that he urged Jeremy Corbyn to ‘come off the fence, back Remain and get on with’ calling for a People’s Vote.

He said the Labour Party had become one of ‘fudgers’ because it was not telling the truth about Brexit or the causes of Brexit – like immigration. He said it should be ‘streaking away’ up against a divided Conserative party.

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