Edinburgh MP labels UK's Brexit strategy '˜a disaster in slow motion'

Deidre Brock, SNP MP for Edinburgh North and Leith

Deidre Brock, MP for Edinburgh North and Leith, argued that leaving the EU was a “disaster in slow motion”, adding “we know that the plunge is coming.”

Speaking during a Commons debate on the Government’s EU Exit Analysis, she said: “Everybody with any sense of how the world works or indeed even the tiniest ability to listen to experts knows that leaving the EU is a disaster in slow motion.

“It is an omnishambles. Like a train in a spaghetti western running onto a half-collapsed bridge, we know that the plunge is coming, but the people driving the training are shovelling more coal into the boiler, they have never looked over the side and they are fairly sure the train can make the jump over to safety on the other side.

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“Frankly, the blank refusal to look at what is actually happening makes blind faith look like scepticism.”

Ms Brock opposed Britain’s exit from the Single Market, stating: “The assertion that we will trade jam with China and scones with Brazil to make up for loss of access to the world’s biggest-barrier free market place, the claim that 27 countries will be crippled without our expertise, this is ... madness.

“I don’t know what’s in the tea in Whitehall, but it’s pretty strong.”

Ms Brock said voters were “entitled to know just how much ignorance is at the heart of Government strategy and what its best forecast is of just how much disaster we are facing”.

She added: “We all know it’s a cliff edge, but we don’t any of us know how high the cliff is.

“The people who are going to have to suffer the blunt trauma of this exit deserve the scant respect of opening up these forecasts to scrutiny.”