When Sir Gus O’Donnell was head of the civil service, those who worked under him would have prided themselves in the code that he was supposed to uphold: to be impartial, avoid politics and do their best to make sure the public is not misled. This morning, Sir Gus was involved in what can only be described as a systematic attempt to mislead the public about the EU and the terms in which Britain would leave.
His point: that it would take more than two years to negotiate the terms of UK’s exit, and this deadline could only be prolonged with hard bargaining from hostile partners.
“Obviously at the end of two years anything we haven’t negotiated has to be extended by unanimity of a vote excluding us so that’s a bit scary.”
Yes, ‘scary’ – a word that could have been chosen by the architects of Project Fear. Here he is, later, on the Today Programme.
There’s only one problem with his argument: it’s nonsense.
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