Major hits out at Brexit and 'un-British' Rwanda plan

Former Tory prime minister Sir John Major has issued a devastating verdict on Brexit and described Rishi Sunak's government as "un-Conservative" and "un-British" in the way it tried to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

- DAVID MADDOX

Speaking to the BBC’s Amol Rajan, Sir John said he agreed with former Labour prime minister Sir Tony Blair that far from reducing immigration as promised by Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and others, Britain’s exit from the EU had increased immigration and replaced Europeans with more people from other parts of the world.

Explaining he had not made any public pronouncements for some time because he found little to like about the last Tory government under Rishi Sunak, he added that the Rwanda plans were worse than the 18th-century deportations of convicts to Australia.

Addressing the 2016 vote to leave the EU, he said: “I don’t think it has done anything good. It has made our country weaker, poorer and that is emphatically not in the interest of our country. The world saw us as a member of the EU; it was a megaphone to amplify our place in the world. Instead, we are isolated and outside. Brexit was sold to the nation on the basis of things that haven’t happened – and couldn’t have happened. There was a great degree of misapplication of reality.”

Blaming both senior Conservative and Labour sources, he went on: “The practical effect is that we are poorer... Being poorer means taxes are higher, expenditure to public services are lower – that is actually what it means and that is what has actually happened because of the false promises of Brexit.”