Jacob Rees-Mogg: Remainers are like Japanese who refused to surrender after WWII Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has compared anti-Brexit campaigners to a Japanese soldier who waited until 1974 to surrender because he […]

Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has compared anti-Brexit campaigners to a Japanese soldier who waited until 1974 to surrender because he refused to accept WWII had ended.

The maverick backbencher, who chairs the pro-Brexit European Research Group, was delivering a speech to mark one year until the UK officially leaves the European Union.

Rees-Mogg, 48, also claimed that Britain would be responsible for its own decline if it failed to embrace trading opportunities post-Brexit.

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Hiding behind skirts

Speaking in central London he said: “With one year to go before the technical date of departure, this is the challenge to the decreasing number of remainders who model themselves on Mr Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who finally surrendered in 1974 having previously refused to believe that the Second World War had ended.”

He added that the UK will no longer be “hiding behind the skirts of the German chancellor” in international affairs.

The North East Somerset MP continued: “If we do not believe that we can do better by our own efforts, our own endeavours and our own choices, then we have become the managers of decline.

“Suez was forced upon us because of our precarious financial state after the war and the dishonesty of those who pursued the policy.

“The national humiliation was brought upon ourselves. This time it would be worse.

“We would be admitting as a nation that we simply did not cut the mustard, we were not up to taking our place in the world, and we were so fearful, fretful of the future, that we had to allow somebody else to do it for us.”

Waitrose trade deal

Former Conservative minister Lord Patten lambasted the claims – saying Brexit supporters’ best hope of a trade deal was “the check-out at Waitrose”.

Speaking at an Open Britain event today, he accused anti-EU MPs of being “jingoistic protectionists” for trying to force new blue passports to be made in the UK, regardless of cost.

Lord Patten, who was a European Commissioner, said: “Red lines are turning pink – or disappearing entirely.

“The Brexiteers swallow one slice of dogma pie after another. They are trying to put lipstick on what they used to call a pig – or at least a vassal state.”

He added: “David Davis seems to me to be a little less bouncy and confident now that negotiations aren’t going so well.”