Wetherspoon founder Tim Martin launches scathing attack on EU as pub chain announces record profits

‘Lurid Brexit claims proved wrong’ and it would be ‘unwise’ for UK to sign trade pact with ‘many-headed hydra’, says pub chain boss

Mr Martin is a vocal supporter of Brexit (PA)

Tim Martin, founder of JD Wetherspoon and a vocal Brexit campaigner, said Britain does not need a trade deal with the European Union as he announced record sales and profits for his pub chain.

Mr Martin, launched a 1,000 word tirade at Remainers in a full-year statement that included just 83 words about his company’s financial performance.

The fierce critic of the EU, who distributed 500,000 beer mats calling for the UK to leave the trading bloc before the June vote, said: “Common sense … suggests that the worst approach for the UK is to insist on the necessity of a ‘deal’ – we don’t need one and the fact that EU countries sell us twice as much as we sell them creates a hugely powerful negotiating position.

“If WTO [World Trade Organisation] tariffs apply, the UK will receive twice as much as it pays.”

The multi-millionaire poured more scorn on those who urged Britain to stay in the EU, including the IMF, Goldman Sachs, PwC and “almost all FTSE 100 companies, who he said forecast trouble “often in lurid terms”, but had been proved wrong.

“Gloomy economic forecasts ... have been proven to be false,” Mr Martin said. “Consensus forecasts from economists, who generally failed to forecast the last recession or the catastrophic flaws of the euro, are almost always delusional,” he said.

He advised that it would be “unwise” to negotiate a deal as “reaching formal trade deals with reluctant counterparties is impossible.”

In a lengthy diatribe, Mr Martin warned that the “central flaw of the EU – an absence of democracy – will almost certainly lead to further economic and political chaos, and to more dire consequences for those who are subject to EU decisions.”

He labelled the EU “an organisation of Byzantine complexity, run by five unelected presidents, with input from numerous other parts of the many-headed Hydra.”

"We were told it would be Armageddon from the OECD, from the IMF, David Cameron, the chancellor and President Obama who were predicting locusts in the fields and tidal waves in the North Sea," Mr Martin told the BBC.

Wetherspoon saw profits rise 12.5 per cent to £66m. Meanwhile, closely watched business surveys have reported a string of better than expected economic data.

Wetherspoon shares have soared 40 per cent from their post-referendum low, making Mr Martin, who owns almost a third of the company’s shares, a paper fortune of tens of millions of pounds, to add to the estimated £260m he already had in the bank.

Speaking to The Independent in July, when Wetherspoon shares had dipped in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, the entrepreneur warned against judging companies on short-term stock market fluctuations.

“If you try and judge fluctuations in prices day-to-day all that will happen is you'll go completely mad and need a heavy dose of valium,” he said.