Project Fear becomes even more desperate in its attempts to scare us into staying in the EU. Today's "you couldn't make it up but we will anyway" comes from Lord Browne, the former boss of BP.
Browne is plugging his new book in the Mail on Sunday which mentions his controversial departure from BP. You may remember the actual details although the Mail declines to mention them. Lord Browne, a closet homosexual, became involved with a rent boy. He then put the rent boy on the BP payroll though his young friend did not actually assist the company. Lord Browne agreed to leave but did so with a £22 million pension pot and a payoff.
Lord Browne has since written a book about the problems of being a gay businessman. You see this was all about him being gay.
Of course it was not. Had his rent boy just been a hooker (female) the issue would have been the same: using company cash to subsidise your sexual partner, to fund your sexual appetite. It would have been a sacking offence in any normal company whichever side Lord Browne batted for.
Go on include a night with a hooker on your next expenses claim. Stress that she was a woman. And you will find out that Browne was not a gay victim but he he lost his job because what he did was so utterly wrong. It was shareholders cash, not his that he was spending - in his lat year at BP he earned £4.58 million.
That he still cannot accept that using shareholders cash in this way is appalling and it does nothing to advance the cause of gay equality in the City. Moreover it also makes the general public mistrust big business. Lord Browne was effectively stealing from his employer. You try doing that and you are fired and your CV is in tatters. Lord Browne got his payoff and continues to be employed on huge sums in the private sector and to be one of the great and the good.
His new book is about why the great unwashed should trust big business more. Whatever...
Lord Browne tells the Mail that a big reason he is an "inner" is that his mother survived Auschwitz and his dad fought in the war and the EU has ensured we have peace in Europe and ever have to see those horrors again. Ok plebs, vote for Brexit and without Britain in the EU its leaders - I guess that means the Germans - will be setting up gas chambers again. What utter tripe, even the most ardent of Eurosceptics would not suggest that the Krauts or indeed some of those dodgy Eastern Europeans would even countenance that for a second.
As for peace in our time, really? As the genocide kicked off in Bosnia the EU did nothing, NATO had to step in. In Ukraine it was EU meddling to oust a democratically elected leader that brought about a horrible Civil War. NATO was established in 1949.
The Common Market became the EU in 1993 after NATO had won the cold war.
NATO has helped ensure peace in Europe for 66 years. the EU has done nothing. Lord Browne is a man who should not be playing any role in public or business life whatsoever given his abuse of shareholders funds back at BP and the way he has defended himself by claiming he is a gay martyr. He is just a thief. And as part of project fear he is a thief talking utter bollocks.