‘Leave the EU and we’ll make your lives a misery.’ Jean-Claude Juncker, the Brussels bureaucrat known as a drunkard, compared the UK to pussies – saying he would treat Britons like cats that had their fur stroked the wrong way.
At the same time, both online and phone polling for YouGov showed the Brexit campaign taking the lead over Remain.
Don't forget Cameron, Clegg, Miliband all objected to Juncker as EU chief but he got job. That's how much we matter. pic.twitter.com/HLuIZI3MEN
— Tim Montgomerie ن (@montie) May 21, 2016
M. Drunkard has threatened Britain plenty of times. As Times executive Tim Montgomerie pointed out, every major party in Britain – Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives – objected to the appointment of the UK hating small man from a small country, Luxembourg, to the EU job, but all sides of the UK spectrum were ignored.
Juncker was appointed and a more vainglorious enemy the UK could not hope to have.
It is unlikely, however, that M. Juncker’s latest threats will win over too many people.
“Deserters will not be welcomed with open arms,” he said. He also agreed with the interviewer that the French and German engine ran the EU, proving that the UK are not considered equal partners by Brussels even now.
Q. The Franco-German engine that drives the EU seems broken right now, does that worry you?
Juncker: I’m used to it. The France-Germany engine of the EU isn’t broken, it’s like a couple bickering.
Q. Will that be true on June 24, if the UK chooses to Brexit?
Juncker: I’m convinced of it. The deserters will not be welcomed with open arms. If the British vote to leave…Britain will have to accept being treated as a third party, and the UK will get its fur stroked the wrong way.
Juncker also said that if the British voted to leave ‘We will have to implement a new arrangement with David Cameron,’ which does not sound particularly threatening. A Leave vote might lead to a re-founded EU focusing on the original core six countries, he conceded, saying that he was ‘not particularly threatened’ by that idea.
This lack of panic will be equally unwelcome in no. 10 and no. 11 as David Cameron and George Osborne have sought to tell the British that leaving the EU would be an apocalyptic disaster that would lead to World War Three and ‘please ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi’
Tomorrow's Daily Telegraph front page: "Cameron: leaving EU could bring war." pic.twitter.com/K2UJvUA2VN
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 8, 2016
David Cameron suggests Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – who leads so-called Islamic State – would be happy if UK left EU
— Nick Eardley (@nickeardleybbc) May 17, 2016
Britons seem unmoved by these threats of disaster, as indeed do EU mandarins in their interviews with French newspapers. You Gov released two phone and online polls on Saturday, showing Leave ahead in the race by both methods.
Yougov #Euref experiment shows Leave lead across both polling modes
Online:
Leave 40%
Remain 38%Phone:
Leave 39%
Remain 36%— Sky Data (@SkyData) May 20, 2016
M. Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s white cat was not available for comment.
