Labour peer: Brexit could be as bad as appeasement
A SENIOR Labour peer faced calls to quit last night after he suggested that leaving the EU may turn out to be Britain’s biggest mistake since the appeasement of Hitler.
Lord Adonis, who advises the Government on infrastructure, said the consequences of Brexit could be at least as bad as UK foreign policy in the 1930s.
The former transport secretary also compared the decision to the break-up of the British Empire.
He warned that quitting the EU could lead to ‘a serious relative decline in our living standards compared with France and Germany’.
One Tory MP last night suggested that the Remain-backing peer should quit as chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission over the inflammatory remarks, while former leader Iain Duncan Smith described them as ‘deeply offensive’.
Prime ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain appeased Nazi Germany in the 1930s by standing by when Hitler marched into the neutral Rhineland and agreeing to the partition of Czechoslovakia.
Last night, Peter Bone, the Conservative MP for Wellingborough, said: ‘Words almost fail me. First of all, to suggest that what this Government is doing is in any way related to appeasement is outrageous.
‘What we are doing is taking power back to this country from a European superstate, not giving power to some a European fascist empire. Using this sort of appalling language is wrong, his arguments are wrong and his tone is wrong.
‘And if he is a Governmentappointed chairman of some quango then he should go – he should either resign tonight and if he doesn’t he the should be fired tomorrow.’
Lord Adonis, who served in the Blair and Brown governments, insisted Britain must retain membership of the single market and customs union after Brexit. He told The House magazine: ‘My language is usually pretty subdued in politics but anyone with a historical sense – and I’m a historian – recognises leaving the economic institutions of the EU, which have guided our destiny as a trading nation for half a century, is a very big step and the importance can’t be over-emphasised.
‘To my mind, it’s as big a step that we’re taking as a country as decolonisation in the 1950s and 60s and appeasement in the 1930s.
‘We got it right on decolonisation, we got it wrong on appeasement and I think we’re in serious danger of getting it wrong in the way that we leave the EU.’
More than 17million Britons voted in favour of leaving the EU last June, despite David Cameron’s Project Fear warnings about peace in Europe being threatened.
Lord Adonis also predicted the British economy would suffer as a result of Brexit if we could not ‘have our cake and eat it’ in negotiations.
He added: ‘We would, in that event, I believe, face a crisis. It may be a crisis played out over quite a number of years – which, after all, is what happened with appeasement.’
‘He should resign’