Sir John: Jacob Rees-Mogg and the ERG are ‘intolerable bullies’
Sir John Major speaks out about Brexit - Credit: PA Wire/PA Images
Sir John Major has attacked Jacob Rees-Mogg's European Research Group – claiming they are worse than the bullies in his party under his premiership.
The former Conservative prime minister said that the pressure the ERG were applying was worse than the eurosceptic members of his own cabinet which he called 'bastards' when they opposed his support for the European Union back in the 1990s.
He told the BBC's Political Thinking podcast that he had great sympathy for Theresa May.
MORE: David Davis says 'upsides' of Brexit are 'vanishing'
He said: 'I think the way she is being treated by some of her colleagues is absolutely outrageous. People in Parliament who are undermining the prime minister by wandering round saying we are going to have 40-odd signatures for a leadership election tomorrow, saying unless the prime minister does this thing or that thing we are going to vote against it, that's an intolerable way to treat a prime minister who is in the middle of negotiations.'
He said that they were entitled to attack her policies, but needed to avoid the 'not-so-subliminal bullying'.
MORE: Remain hero Ken Clarke tells hardliners 'you're the minority'
You may also want to watch:
'I have no objection to that but I think this subliminal threat, this not-so-subliminal bullying 'you follow this particular route or we are going to oppose you,' is simply not the way that I would have wished my colleagues in the House of Commons to behave.'
Reminiscing about his premiership and the 'bastards' in that era, he said: 'Their behaviour was pretty intolerable, but not nearly as intolerable as the way the present prime minister is being treated.'
MORE: Why May's warning that we 'risk no Brexit at all' is fine by me
Most Read
- 1 Empty shelves are partly down to Brexit - but Leavers won't admit it
- 2 Why Bristol is the street art city
- 3 What I learned by avoiding England and the Euros
- 4 Telling the truth is now the only sackable offence
- 5 Has something shifted in sado-populist Britain?
- 6 Cost of Brexit is already 38 times more than the money set aside for levelling up
- 7 Boris Johnson: The sado-populist prime minister
- 8 A very nearly enchanted evening
- 9 Priti Patel - the poster girl for our poisonous politics
- 10 Could southern discomfort sink a rebalancing agenda still in its infancy?
Become a Supporter
The New European is proud of its journalism and we hope you are proud of it too. We believe our voice is important - both in representing the pro-EU perspective and also to help rebalance the right wing extremes of much of the UK national press. If you value what we are doing, you can help us by making a contribution to the cost of our journalism.
