The furore surrounding the Brexit divorce bill is hotting up

The furore surrounding the Brexit divorce bill is hotting up. The weekend’s papers saw speculation that Britain would cough up £36bn as part of a settlement package for its departure from the EU. Nonsense, says Downing Street, with the Prime Minister’s spokesman saying this morning: ‘I don’t recognise the figure’. It’s not only the government hitting back; Tory eurosceptics are also turning up the volume. Yet while the government is eager to talk down the size of the bill, the criticism coming from the backbenches is less nuanced. Instead of quibbling over the amount, the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and John Redwood dismiss the bill out of hand. Rees-Mogg wrote on Twitter: ‘There is no logic to this figure. Legally we owe nothing’. Redwood had a similar take on LBC: ‘There is absolutely no legal need or political need to offer them anything at all, full stop’, he said. Peter Bone also added his voice to the debate, saying that it would be ‘totally bizarre to give the EU any money, let alone £36bn, given that over the years that we have been in the EU or its predecessor we have given them, net, over £200bn’.