BORIS Johnson and Michael Gove should face jail for misleading the public over Brexit, according to the controversial business magnate Alan Sugar.
Writing on Twitter this week, the former host of The Apprentice described both Johnson and Gove as “the biggest liars in 2016… with the red bus”, referring to the infamous Vote Leave campaign bus which bore the slogan “We send the EU £350 million a week – let’s fund our NHS instead.”
Sugar added: “They should both go to Jail. As a chairman of a public company if I mislead or lied to my shareholders (in this case the public) I would be sent to jail.”
Following the 2016 EU campaign, a number of prominent Brexit campaigners continued to defend the slogan, with then-foreign secretary Johnson writing in late 2017 that “once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control or roughly £350m per week.”
Appearing before the Liaison Committee in Westminster in July of last year, the Prime Minister acknowledged the assertion that the £350m claim had caused “a great deal of hoo-ha”, but nevertheless maintained that the promised figure was in fact an “underestimation”.
Sugar’s accusation follows another political intervention earlier this month, in which he reignited a feud with former US President Donald Trump on social media.
During a deposition by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James as part of a multi-year civil investigation into whether the Trump Organisation provided misleading financial statements to tax authorities, Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer James’ questions.
Responding to this, Sugar wrote that Trump has “a short memory”, having “said in the past people who plead the 5th have something to hide”, saying: “This guy is double Teflon.”
Sugar added: “Unbelievable nothing will happen to him he will get away with what ever is alleged he has done wrong.”
