Pro-EU Tory Matthew Parris: ‘If I Were Running Remain I’d Have Recruited 10 Fake Leavers’

Former Conservative Party Member of Parliament and ardent pro-EU journalist Matthew Parris has told Sky News that if he were in charge of the ‘Remain’ campaign in Britain’s European Union (EU) referendum, he would have recruited “pretend” leavers to join the ‘out’ campaign and then start defecting.

Speaking on Thursday evening, Mr. Parris offered credibility to the theory first expressed by Breitbart London Editor in Chief Raheem Kassam who claimed that Dr. Sarah Wollaston – who today defected from the Leave camp to the Remain camp – could be a Remain “plant” in the Leave camp.

https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/740660470403768320

Kassam was ridiculed by the Westminster establishment last night, but as the day’s news has continued, a number of figures have raised questions over Dr. Wollaston’s motivations.

Tory MP @Stewart4Pboro has just retweeted the theory that @sarahwollaston was "a Remain plant" pic.twitter.com/YNFJ2iOCSm

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) June 8, 2016

But Matthew Parris, who is a self-professed liberal and pro-Remain campaigner has lent further credibility to the idea that some MPs may well be “pretend” Leavers ready to jump ship in order to stymie the Leave campaign.

He said on Sky (above): “It does strike me given the ripples that Sarah Wollaston has caused, that if I were running the Remain campaign I might have recruited about 10 MPs to pretend to be Leavers then to start coming over one or two a day for the next two weeks. I think it would have quite an effect”.

While Mr. Parris stopped short of claiming that Dr. Wollaston was one of these campaigners herself, it lends to the theory that there may be further defections – contrary to what even journalists and bloggers on the Leave side have been briefing to the press all day.

The media establishment has agreed that Dr. Wollaston is “too independent” to engage in behaviour like this, thought Breitbart London has shown how she has traditionally sided with Mr. Cameron and Number 10 on the issue of the European Union, something which should have set alarm bells ringing inside Vote Leave from the outset of the campaign.