To link those who voted Brexit to fascism is appalling (and historically illiterate), Archbishop

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has once again raised eyebrows with his political opinions. Addressing the General Synod — the Church of England’s annual talking shop — he crassly linked Brexit with what he calls ‘the fascist tradition’.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby observed: ‘There are a thousand ways to explain the Brexit vote or the election of President Trump or the strength in the polls in Holland of Geert Wilders or in France of Madame Le Pen [popular Far-Right leaders in each country] and many other leaders in nationalist, populist or even fascist traditions of politics.’

Implying in this roundabout way that the ordinary, decent people who voted for Brexit are somehow marked or tainted by traces of ‘fascism’ is an appallingly ill-considered move.

The Archbishop is reckoned an intelligent and well-meaning man, but here, he has revealed something alarming about the way in which he sees the world. Indeed, in their contempt for a democratic result, and their attempts to do everything to thwart it, it’s the Remoaners who might be said to share in the ‘fascist tradition’.

And, of course, I accept that Remainers are not closet fascists or Nazis — and neither are Brexit voters.

In the same speech in which he made this silly assertion, the Archbishop also lamented: ‘The language of public life at present is deeply, savagely divided and may become worse.’

Divisive

He’s right about this. The language of public life has, particularly from the Remainers, become more aggressive, less civil — although this is arguably because there are suddenly such huge issues at stake, after decades of rather sleepy consensus and drift.

But isn’t casually describing Brexit voters as being in the same bracket as ‘ fascism’ in itself deeply, savagely divisive, not to mention totally untrue?

Indeed, it is an historically absurd contention. Many of those who voted for Brexit were voting for British self-determination and democracy, thus upholding the principles so dear to those who fought against fascism in World War II.

What is more, our parents’ and grandparents’ ‘traditional’ views, to borrow Welby’s language, left them instinctively suspicious of government by diktat from unelected apparatchiks such as the European Commission in Brussels.

Now, for the Archbishop, rejecting these unelected apparatchiks makes Brexit supporters guilty of a complicity with the ‘fascist tradition’. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The writer George Orwell was a committed socialist who, unlike so many on the Left today, really did understand and love his fellow countrymen.

In 1941, at close to the darkest hour in the war, he wrote bluntly: ‘ What has kept England on its feet during the past year? In part, no doubt, some vague idea about a better future, but chiefly the atavistic emotion of patriotism . . .

‘For the last 20 years, the main object of English Leftwing intellectuals has been to break this feeling down, and if they had succeeded, we might be watching the SS men patrolling the London streets at this moment.’

Orwell, in other words, understood that patriotism and national pride — the very qualities that underpinned Brexit — were also the principal bulwarks against fascism during World War II.

Sadly, such windy, illconsidered pronouncements as the Archbishop’s are typical of the Church of England today.

A few months back, the Church announced it was to hold a series of debates about homosexuality — what else? — spending a quarter of a million pounds employing ‘conflict resolution experts’. You really don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but then, the Anglican Church — exquisitely unconcerned about its ever more empty pews — seems obsessed to a point of madness about homosexuality.

The old joke used to be that our dear old C of E was essentially ‘the Tory Party at prayer’. It could seem something like a quaint anachronism, redolent of a world of squire, parson and tea on the lawn, yet benevolent and amiable in its way.

Today, though, the Church of England is desperate to be fashionable and engaged. The typical Sunday morning sermon is often barely distinguishable from an editorial column in the Guardian.

Oblivious

Inevitably, there have been calls at this General Synod for a debate of President Trump’s ban on issuing visas to certain Middle Eastern and African countries — even though this ban has now been lifted.

Why our national church, which seems oblivious to family breakdown and the moral and spiritual bankruptcy in so many areas of Britain, should think it its job to discuss (and no doubt condemn) the domestic policy of a foreign country is a mystery.

According to the traditional view — upheld by my own father, for instance, a lifelong Church of England vicar — the job of the church was to preach the Gospel. You don’t seem to hear that one much any more. Our churchmen today prefer to preach politics to religion — or even worse, a muddled mix of politics and religion. (My father also used to joke that there must be a God watching over the Church of England, or it would long ago have disappeared in a puff of irrelevance.)

In marked contrast to the Archbishop Welby, his predecessor, Archbishop George Carey, has spoken perceptively about how the current resurgence of national feeling in the West might be viewed.

Crucially, perhaps, Carey’s own origins are more humble than Welby’s. He was born in the East End of London, went to a secondary modern in Barking and started work for the London Electricity Board.

Is this why he shows a better understanding of the British people and their Brexit vote?

Welby, on the other hand, was educated at Eton and Cambridge and has any number of grand family connections, including the Dukes of Richmond.

He is, no doubt, a modest man and surely does his best to understand the realities of life outside Lambeth Palace.

But it all leaves you with the impression that he is just another member of the elite, which still seeks to undermine Brexit while sneeringly attributing it to some ugly phenomenon called ‘populism’.

Tellingly, this description speaks to the belief Britain’s new-found independent spirit is vulgar and based on a lack of education. Sadly, Welby, when he joins in by making derisive jibes about fascism, sounds like just another snooty member of this ruling class.

As Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, observed last week, the disdain the Establishment showed for those worried about the EU encouraged many to vote to leave.

‘I [was] told: “But if you even contemplate voting for Brexit, you must be either ignorant, uneducated, stupid or a racist”, to which the response was: “I’m none of those, and I resent being described in those terms”,’ said Lord King.

Sneering

Instead of standing out as a leader willing to question the status quo, Welby’s views chime perfectly with those of the Liberal Establishment in academia, the BBC and Whitehall.

Yet as Archbishop of Canterbury, rather than sneering and making offensive comparisons with fascists, should he not be making a more considered attempt to understand what motivates Brexit voters?

The intense levels of disillusionment with the political class, the longing for a sense of identity in a world that is changing too rapidly for social cohesion, the mass movement of peoples to our country that doesn’t seem so much exciting and diverse (as some bill it) as destabilising and divisive . . .

To suggest that these views are of the ‘fascist tradition’ is to grasp for the hysterical terminology of the keyboard zealots of Facebook and Twitter, their shallow language of labelling and insult.

It is, frankly, profoundly unworthy of the leader of the Church of England.