Conservative peer Lord Moylan has suggested Vote Leave “never claimed Turkey was imminently going to join the EU” in a bizarre Twitter exchange.
The ardent Brexiteer was responding to a Full Fact statement posted ahead of the referendum in 2016 which disputed claims of a widely-publicised accession.
He said the Vote Leave camp had only suggested inviting Turkey into the EU was a “plan” that the “UK was funding”.
Turkey featured heavily in the EU referendum debate.
The Vote Leave campaign put forward immigration projections based on Turkey, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Serbia joining the EU in 2020 and defence minister Penny Mordaunt said that the UK would not be able to prevent Turkey from joining.
This was proved not to be true and, in 2022, Turkey is no closer to joining the EU than it was in 2016.
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