Jacob Rees-Mogg warns Remainers deliberately undermining Brexit as they look to make UK a failure

Jacob Rees-Mogg warns Remainers deliberately undermining Brexit as they look to make UK a failure
Jacob Rees Mogg Tom Harwood exclusive article
Georgina Cutler

By Georgina Cutler


Published: 12/01/2023

- 11:21

Updated: 14/02/2023

- 10:23

Jacob Rees-Mogg claims Remainers are being 'obstructive' in a bid to make it 'more difficult' for Britain to benefit from Brexit

Jacob Rees-Mogg accused Remainers of deliberate "objection and obstruction" to make it "more difficult" for Britain to exploit the benefits of Brexit.

In an exclusive interview with GB News, the former Conservative business secretary accused the "blob" - slang for the civil service elite - of undermining ministers' attempts to remove EU laws from the UK statue book.


He said: "There is obstructionism. Remainers hate it because it is the key divergence from Europe that it would make it very much harder for a government with a different policy to shadow Europe quietly once we've got rid of retained EU law.

"And that's why there's so much objection and obstruction from the ‘blob’ and from the House of Lords which has an overwhelming majority of Remainer peers."

Brexit: Jacob Rees-Mogg warns Remainers are deliberately undermining Brexit
Brexit: Jacob Rees-Mogg warns Remainers are deliberately undermining Brexit
GB News

Rishi Sunak has vowed his government will review all laws imposed on the UK by Bruseels when it was still a part of the bloc by the end of this year.

Some Tories are understood to have pushed for a delay to the deadline arguing it is too soon.

But Rees-Mogg rejected the criticism and claimed a law firm could complete the review in just a month.

“Well, as I understand, the government is pushing ahead with the retained EU law bill," he said.

"And I think this is tremendously important that you had an excellent interview recently with a very distinguished lawyer who said that he could do it by himself in a year and that a law firm could do it in a month. And I think that's right.

"I think the problems around it have been exaggerated that all of these laws will have papers around them would have required information when they were brought in, all of that is on file."

The North East Somerset MP added: "It's very straightforward. Bear in mind 1400 of them had to be dug out of the National Archive because they were essentially not being used. So that's just clearing things out."

In a wide-ranging interview with GB News, Rees-Mogg was also asked about planning and whether ditching reform plans will hurt the country's growth prospects.

He called on the Government to liberalise planning laws to get more houses built.

"We have a socialist planning system based on a late 1940s Planning Act, which thinks that central government can predict and plan the amount of building that we need," he said.

"And I have thought some time we need to move to a more market-based planning system. We need to free up the planning laws.

"And I think voters are ahead of politicians in this. I think they are ready for planning reform because they want their children and their grandchildren to be able to buy properties which they can't at the moment."

Jacob Rees-Mogg tells Tom Harwood that the UK faces 'obstructionism'
Jacob Rees-Mogg tells Tom Harwood that the UK faces 'obstructionism'

And opening up about the major mistake made under Liz Truss as Prime Minister, the former minister said the UK's high inflation was more the fault of the Bank of England than the government.

He said: "Perfection is not within the human gift. There was a concatenation of circumstances that meant that the financial statement in late September 2022 had consequences that led to the end of that government pretty quickly.

"It coincided with the Bank of England failing to raise interest rates enough and being slow in dealing with the inflationary problem. The independent Bank of England has one task, to keep inflation at 2 per cent. It has manifestly failed at that task. That is not the government, that is the independent Bank of England.

"As a minister, we all had to pretend the Bank of England was doing marvellously well. It wasn't it. It's an institution that has let the country down."

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