Lord King Speaks Out: Former Bank Governor’s Dismay
September 5, 2018Lord King in an interview with the BBC has spoken out over the Brexit shambles. An extract from the BBC article in printed below. The full report can be reached on the BBC website by following the link at the end. It includes the filmed interview.
Former Bank of England governor Lord King has blasted Brexit preparations as “incompetent”.
The Brexit supporter said it “beggared belief” that the world’s sixth-biggest economy should be talking of stockpiling food and medicines.
This left the government without a credible bargaining position, he said.
A spokesperson for the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) said that getting a good deal with the EU was “by far, the most likely outcome”.
Lord King said that “a government that cannot take action to prevent some of these catastrophic outcomes illustrates a whole lack of preparation”.
“It doesn’t tell us anything about whether the policy of staying in the EU is good or bad, it tells us everything about the incompetence of the preparation for it.”
In a BBC interview to discuss the 10 years since the economic crisis – due to be aired next week – Lord King spent a significant amount of time saying the 11th hour preparation for a no-deal Brexit has undermined the government’s negotiating position.
He added: “We haven’t had a credible bargaining position, because we hadn’t put in place measures where we could say to our colleagues in Europe, ‘Look, we’d like a free-trade deal, we think that you would probably like one too, but if we can’t agree, don’t be under any misapprehension, we have put in place the measures that would enable us to leave without one.'”