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Sir Vince Cable has said the Government’s Brexit team would “struggle to get their heads around a toddler’s Lego set.”

The Lib Dem leader used his keynote address at the party’s conference to compare the Cabinet’s differences on Britain’s exit from the EU to a public school pillow fight.

"A disaster looms - Brexit. The product of a fraudulent and frivolous campaign led by two groups of silly public school boys reliving their dormitory pillow fights," Sir Vince said.

He went on: “And now thanks to Boris Johnson, we have been led into a full scale riot, while the head teacher is hiding, barricaded in her office.”

Sir Vince appeared to be referencing the Foreign Secretary’s open challenge to the Prime Minister’s Brexit policy at the weekend in which he released a 4,000-word essay setting out his personal demands for a hard Brexit.

After branding Brexit Secretary David Davis as “infantile”, he said: “Brexit is being managed by people who'd struggle to get their heads around a toddlers’ Lego set. They live in a world of fairy tales."

Taking a swipe at US President Donald Trump, Sir Vince said it was "unforgivable" the Government was entrusting Britain's standing in the world "to a special relationship with a president who is volatile, dangerous, and an apologist for religious and racial hatred".

He went onto to say that Britain’s EU withdrawal ranked alongside the Iraq War and the banking crisis as one of the "three great disasters" to hit Britain in recent years.

Sir Vince accused ministers of behaving like dictators over Brexit as he called for "political adults" in Tory and Labour ranks to join forces with him and try to reverse Brexit.

He challenged the Foreign Secretary and other Brexiteers to defend any deal hammered out with Brussels in a new referendum.

The Lib Dem leader labelled Brexiteers "masochists", saying: "What are they afraid of? They now believe in the slogan of dictators everywhere: 'one person, one vote, once'.

"We believe the public have a right to change their mind.

"At the end of these tortuous divorce negotiations, the British public must be given a vote on the outcome."

Sir Vince called for a cross-party effort against a hard Brexit.

He said: "What the country now desperately needs is some political adults. There are sensible grown-ups in the Conservative Party, and the Labour Party and the Greens."

Sir Vince added that the sharp drop in the pound since the referendum was a taste of things to come.

The Lib Dem leader also used the address to demand that the Prime Minister guarantees the rights of EU nationals in the UK

He then accused Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of trying to face both ways on Brexit.

Sir Vince also used to speech to call for wealth taxes and insisted his party was not just "Ukip in reverse", caring only about Brexit.

He urged a crackdown on property speculators to ease housing problems and said he wanted to see the tax system shift to imposing levies on wealth accumulated through property and savings, rather than work.