In a speech hitting out at direct democracy, Emmanuel Macron has claimed Britain was “manipulated” into voting for Brexit by “fake news” during the EU referendum.
Speaking at a town hall meeting in Normandy, the French president greeted news of the British Parliament’s historic defeat of Prime Minister Theresa May’s super-soft Brexit agreement by declaring that “the first losers of [No Deal Brexit] would be the British”.
“It’s a referendum that has been manipulated, manipulated from outside by a lot of what we call fake news, where everything and anything was said,” Macron alleged, claiming pro-Leave politicians “lied to the people” and that what the British voted for in 2016 “is not possible”.