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In a significant intervention in the increasingly acrimonious battle over the UK’s forthcoming referendum on membership of the EU, Sir John told an audience at an investment conference in Hong Kong on Thursday that a UK departure “would not only be a huge setback for my own country but for many other nations, too”.
A British decision to exit in the vote, to be held in June, would mean that the EU would lose its fastest growing economy, one of its two nuclear powers, and “the country with the longest and deepest foreign policy reach”, Sir John said. As a result “the EU would be gravely weakened” in comparison to the power of the US and China, he warned.
“Does the UK really wish to be the cause of that? Does she really wish to abdicate her role in European and global influence? I truly think not,” he said.
In a sharply-worded attack on Leave campaigners — whom he accused of “playing Russian roulette with the economic future of the UK” — Sir John set out the geopolitical implications of a British exit.
Voting to leave the EU would spur on Valdimir Putin’s expansionist power-politics, Sir John warned: “We ignore what Russia is doing at our peril. A united Europe can help penalise and deter [Russia]; a disunited, shrivelled Europe cannot.”
Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)
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