FORMER Bank of England governor Lord King claims Brexit could help Britain's economy thrive.
The peer blasted George Osborne's 'Project Fear' tactics, and dismissed Remainers' pre-referendum scaremongering as simply "speculative" and "insulting to the intelligence of the voter".
In an interview with Central Banking Magazine, Baron King of Lothbury brushed off Remain voters' fears about a post-Brexit Britain, claiming that the UK will actually be in a better position to rebalance its economy.
Lord King, governor between 2003 and 2013, said: "The UK economy has to be rebalanced one way or another, remain or leave.
"We need a level of the exchange rate much closer to the level we had in the middle of 2013.
"We are now in a better position to rebalance the UK economy.”
The positive comments defy those of his successor, Mark Carney, who previously warned that a vote for Brexit could lead the UK into recession.
Research published by the Bank and the Treasury prior to the referendum said that productivity would suffer and the UK would be materially weaker in 15 to 20 years as a result of Brexit.
But Lord King disregarded these claims, and particularly those of former Chancellor George Osborne, stating that nobody really knew what the impact of leaving the EU would be.
The former Chancellor used the Treasury to release forecasts suggesting the UK would fall into a recession in the short term and be 6.2 per cent smaller by 2030, at a cost of £4,300 to each household.
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Lord King said: "An unfortunate aspect of the campaign was the government forecasts of what the consequences of Brexit might be, which inevitably were highly speculative, in particular for the long run.”
“The mistake was to portray these extreme outcomes in the future as almost inevitable rather than what they were, which were highly speculative forecasts.
The ex-governor added that the Remain campaign was "counter-productive" and "insulting to the intelligence of the voters."
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