Prime Minister David Cameron is facing calls to resign over allegations that he secretly plotted with big business to begin “Project Fear” while still negotiating a deal European Union leaders.
Mr Cameron told MPs at the time that he ruled nothing out, including campaigning to leave the EU, if he did not get his way.
However, a leaked letter sent from Serco boss Rupert Soames to Mr Cameron shows that he had already brought big businesses on board the pro-EU campaign, asking them to include a warning over Brexit in their annual reports, knowing they would have to be filed before the June referendum date.
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the Prime Minister’s plotting “outrageous” and warned that if true then the Prime Minister had misled Parliament, which would be a resigning matter.
“It is a real scandal,” he said: “Because assuming it is true then parliament was misled, and if Parliament is misled, historically that is a matter of resignations.”
“I think to be organising the Remain campaign when saying that you rule nothing out, not just to MPs but to the British people, is shocking.”
The MP for North East Somerset called to for an inquiry into the allegations because “if Parliament has been misled, the country has been misled and faith has been broken in the British people.”
“It is a scandal of the highest order,” he added.
Misleading Parliament, he said, is “the highest constitutional crime” and “if it can be proved this has happened then of course any minister has to go.”
Fellow Conservative MP and former Mayor of London Boris Johnson also said earlier today that the letter showed the Prime Minister’s renegotiation effort was “fiction” and said the claims made Britain look like a “Banana republic”.
“This is the biggest stitch up since the Bayeux Tapestry,” Mr Johnson said. “It stinks to high heaven. FTSE 100 chiefs are seeing their pay packets soar while uncontrolled immigration is forcing down wages for British workers.
“Now we learn that some fat cats have been secretly agreeing to campaign for remain while angling for lavish Government contracts. It makes us look like a banana republic.
“And it is also now beyond doubt that the so called renegotiation was a fiction designed to bamboozle the public. It was a meaningless mime, a ritual, a kabuki drama in which the outcome was utterly preordained.
“This is not the far-reaching and fundamental reform we were promised.”
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