People's Vote Campaigner Goes Head-To-Head With Wetherspoon's Tim Martin On Brexit

1 July 2019, 10:40

A People's Vote campaigner got into a row with leading Brexiter Tim Martin over whether the UK would suffer from a no-deal Brexit.

Over the weekend, Jeremy Hunt said that some companies going out of business would be a price that had to be paid in order to leave the EU with or without a deal.

But Hugo Dixon, deputy chair of the People's Vote told Nick Ferrari: "Quite a lot of businesses would go bust if we crash out with no deal.

"Jeremy Hunt is showing that he is as bad as Boris Johnson. We have a bidding war between two extreme Brexit candidates to be the next Tory leader.

"Two men are beating their chests like gorillas to prove to the 160,000 Tory members which one of them has got the toughest nut who could then crash us out and take us into the abyss. It's an extremely dangerous situation and we must stop it."

But Tim Martin, the founder of Wetherspoon and a leading Brexit supporter, took umbrage with the words Mr Dixon used. He responded: "The language, to me, is absurd. The idea that you need a massive 20,000 page document with the EU before you leave is a toxic one.

"Everyone knows how painful divorce can be. Imagine if people had to stay in the same house until all the legal aspects were finalised. It would make it infinitely worse.

"The deal we've been offered from the EU is extremely poor. It's perfectly possible to trade on WTO terms as we do with the rest of the world.

"When people talk about crashing out and an abyss, it's the same story we heard when we didn't join the Euro. All this stuff about abysses and crashing out is absurd."

Hugo then responded and things got even more heated. Watch the clash at the top of the page.