Jacob Rees-Mogg’s fund is opening up in Ireland. Nigel Lawson wants to be a French resident. Andy Wigmore is planning to move to Belize. Voters may wonder why, having promised “sunlit uplands” outside the EU, Brexiters are now bailing on their country like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
The latest hypocrite to hit the headlines is Rees-Mogg. The City firm he co-founded, Somerset Capital Management, has set up an investment fund in Ireland and warned clients about the potential risks from Brexit.
Rees-Mogg, who receives £14,000 for 30 hours work a month from Somerset, told the Telegraph the decision to launch the Irish fund was “nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit”. But the Somerset prospectus for the new investment warns that “considerable uncertainty” during and after Brexit may affect the fund.
Meanwhile Lawson, the former Vote Leave chair who lives in France, has now applied for permanent residency there. He said he was “not particularly worried” about what would happen to Brits in France post-Brexit, though he understood others were concerned about losing healthcare cover and hoped it would be “sorted out”.
Demand a vote on the Brexit deal
Click here to find out moreThe former chancellor was criticised during the referendum for heading the Leave campaign while enjoying free movement rights in France. The upshot of Lawson’s campaign’s success is that Brits in future will find it harder to live the cross-Channel life he enjoys.
Another Brexiter planning to jump ship is Wigmore, who helped run Leave.EU alongside Nigel Farage and Arron Banks. He’ll be taking advantage of his Belize citizenship and leaving the UK for the small tropical nation this summer.
Back in March 2017 Farage said he would “go and live abroad” if Brexit turns out to be a “disaster”. While the former UKIP leader is still in Blighty, the flight of his Brexiter comrades is a sign of how badly Brexit is going.
Most people can’t relocate their lives or business interests out of Brexit harm’s way. They can only watch as its champions head for the hills.
Edited by Hugo Dixon
Well blow me down! Like Littlejohn lamenting the demise of engerland from his chosen residence in Florida, to proprietors abroad. Perchance JRM would call it skullbuggary!
Two more to add: Christopher Chandler, founder of Legatum and Mark Stoleson, its CEO. Legatum is a think tank which backs a hard Brexit – but whose management appears to value the four freedoms of the single market, hence the rush to buy Maltese passports for themselves and their families –
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexiteer-hard-brexit-eu-passport-buy-malta-christopher-chandler-single-market-customs-union-a8185336.html
The Brexit drama reminds me of the quintessence of British humour: the Black Knight by M. Python. Spectators are invited to an exercise of surreal self-destruction and dehumanization where actors are impersonating with gusto thickness, self-importance, and arrogance.
Other guilty parties include Michael Portillo, Peter Lilley, Andrew Neil, Polizzi. And let’s not forget that the arch-brexiteer Farage is desperate to obtain a passport from an EU country.
At least the consensus seem to be that Britain IS a “sinking ship”!! People mentioned in the article were always enjoying a life abroad: a second home in France or Italy or Spain or further. That is the privilege of the rich. People with a house/home abroad already will be able to keep it, just as it was before the Common Market. Brexit will not change that. The people who may suffer are the very people who voted for Brexit; the more gullible ones, the ones who still believe that Britain is a powerful world power who can dictate terms and conditions to any other power in the world…. But the world changes all the time and fast… Only time ( and a long long time…) will tell if Britain was right to exit the EU. In the meantime, the ship goes forth in choppy waters…
Probably they want to go back to the days when only the very rich could retire abroad. Fewer proles cluttering the place up.