Remain poll lead collapses as experts predict Brexit will be ‘rocket boost’ to UK share prices

DAVID Cameron’s Remain campaign was yesterday rocked by a triple whammy of bad news.

An exclusive Sun poll showed support for the pro-EU camp had dwindled to a one-point lead.

Analysts also predicted UK shares would get a “rocket boost” and firms would boom post-Brexit.

And Britain has been invaded by crop-ravaging moths from Europe that have swarmed across the Channel.

The blows to the campaign to keep us in the EU followed The Sun’s declaration of support for a Leave vote.

The nation goes to the polls for the In/Out referendum in just eight days.

But yesterday the Remain camp was relying on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to front their so-called “Project Fear”.On another dramatic day in the Brexit battle, a ComRes poll for The Sun last night put support for staying in the EU at just 46 per cent, with backing for Brexit at 45 per cent.

Last month Remain had a commanding 11 point lead of 52 per cent to 41 per cent.

The latest poll is a hammer blow to the PM.

The survey of 1,002 voters is highly-respected ComRes’ worst showing for Remain since its polling began on the referendum more than a year ago.

It shows the outcome is still on a knife edge.

Meanwhile strategists at Deutsche Bank predict that the UK’s top companies will outperform their EU-based rivals by as much as five per cent in the wake of a Brexit.

They say a vote to leave the EU would cause panic on Europe’s stockmarkets — causing them to fall by as much as ten per cent.

But London’s FTSE 100 index of blue-chip companies will perform better, boosted by a weak Pound.

That will also be good for exporters, as it will make British goods cheaper for European countries to buy.

The bank’s Sebastian Raedler, who helped compile the research, said: “If this is correct, the FTSE 100 should outperform the Stoxx 600 (the wider European mark- ets) by around five per cent”.

Financier Jeremy Hosking, a successful investment manager who founded the campaign group BrexitExpress, said: “The City will experience an unprecedented boom when we are liberated from the EU.

“The City has proven itself time and again to be a flexible and innovative market place with world-beating expertise.

“I know that many more City people support Brexit than say so publicly because they are confident in what we have to offer, despite the histrionics.”

Shares in UK firms in the FTSE 100 rocketed by a fifth after the UK left the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

John Higgins of Capital Economics, writing earlier this year, said it was partly due to a fall in sterling, “something that might occur in the event of a Brexit”.

Meanwhile UK cabbage and Brussels sprouts crops are under threat from tens of millions of migrant moths.

• DOWNING Street last denied reports it was looking to strike a last-ditch deal with the EU over free movement by re-opening David Cameron’s renegotiation with European leaders.

-The headline on this article has been amended to make clear that the 'Rocket Boost' was a prediction about the effect of Brexit on UK share prices, rather than a description of share prices at the time of publication.

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