Brexiteer Boris Johnson has promised to apologize to the nation if the UK slides into recession in the event of a ‘Leave’ vote.
His pledge came in response to a caller to radio station LBC, who asked the former London mayor: “If we Brexit and we go into recession, would you have the political courage, to go on TV … and say sorry, I made it wrong and I apologize?”
Johnson promised he would, saying he thinks he has “always been pretty humble about everything.”
“Of course I will [apologize].
"I’m not sure what my political career holds anyway. This is far more important than any individual political career.”
Financial experts have issued warnings about the harm to the economy of a leave vote, including former currency speculator George Soros, who told the Guardian if Britain leaves the EU “the value of the pound would decline precipitously.”
“I want people to know what the consequences of a vote to leave the EU would be before they cast their votes rather than afterward,” he wrote.
“A vote to leave could see the week end with a black Friday and serious consequences for ordinary people.”
But Johnson argued pro-Brexit British entrepreneurs, including vacuum inventor Jeremy Dyson, were better barometers as “job creators” rather than “market speculators.”
David Beckham comes out backing remain, as Leave.EU highlights wife’s old Euroskeptic views
Former England football captain David Beckham is backing a vote to remain in the EU, saying he wants his children to grow up “facing the problems of the world together and not alone.”
In a statement on the Stronger In’s Facebook page, he said playing internationally had given him an appreciation of European cultures and players.
But Beckham’s defense of the EU may have once been at odds with his wife’s view on the issue.
Victoria Beckham, in an interview with the Spectator 20 years ago, expressed skepticism about the EU.
“It’s been a terrible trick on the British people,” she said.
“The Euro-bureaucrats are destroying every bit of national identity and individuality. Let me give you an example - those new passports are revolting, an insult to our kingdom. We must keep our national individuality.”
However on Tuesday, she condemned the ‘Leave’ campaign for using her old comments.
“In response to the Leave.EU campaign who have today tried to put a spin on quotes made 20 years ago about keeping or losing the pound, I have to say my comments were not about this referendum and should not be misused in this way.”
JK Rowling and Tory MP fight it out over Beckham’s pro-EU stance on Twitter
Tory MP Nadine Dorries started a Twitter spat when she said Beckham’s position as a multi-millionaire proved the vote had become a “division of the classes.”
Harry Potter author JK Rowling was quick to hit back and defend Beckham.
The heated debate on “class” continued.
Dorries said she had grown up in a working class family in a council estate in Liverpool. Rowling replied by saying: “Then you should not be applauding and enabling social mobility… not sneering when it happens.”
‘EU campaigners are comparable to Lord Voldemort’ - JK Rowling
Rowling has certainly been vocal on the EU referendum today, earlier comparing campaigners to “monsters and villains” like Lord Voldemort.
“I’m not an expert on much, but I do know how to create a monster,” she wrote in a statement published on her website.
Rowling says both sides of the campaign have “told stories,” appealing to our need to make sense of the world through storytelling, and by creating monsters to stir up our deepest fears.
“The Leave campaign’s narrative has descended to this: we are being exploited or cheated by the EU. If we can’t see that Britain will only regain superpower status if we leave the union, we must be unpatriotic, cowardly or part of a corrupt elite.
"Remainers have mostly countered, not with an optimistic vision of the union, but with bleak facts: money is pouring out of the country at the prospect of the Brexit and experts in every field think that leaving the EU will be a catastrophic mistake. Be afraid, says Remain, turn back while there's still time: you are hurtling towards a precipice.
"However, Remain are finding many ears closed to their grim prognostications. The economic crash of 2008 left a pervasive feeling in its wake that financial institutions are not to be trusted. 'The establishment' has become a term of blanket abuse.
“We live in a cynical and insecure age. Trust in disinterested sources has been shaken, while popular culture glorifies the hunch and the gut feeling. In America, they call this 'post-truth politics'. Forget the facts, feel the fury," she said.
Rowling went on to accuse Nigel Farage of using Nazi-style propaganda in his posters.
"The picture of Nigel Farage standing in front of a poster showing a winding line of Syrian refugees captioned 'Breaking Point' is, as countless people have already pointed out, an almost exact duplicate of propaganda used by the Nazis,” Rowling wrote.