Brussels worship has warped his judgment
FEW politicians epitomise the smug, liberal metropolitan elite more than Lord Adonis, the ultimate Establishment insider.
A disciple of Tony Blair and a Cabinet minister under Gordon Brown, he collects quango appointments as assiduously as he mouths the platitudes of the chattering class. It should only be expected, therefore, that he should have poisonous views on Brexit.
In Labour circles, Adonis is feted as an analytical figure with a sharp intellect, as befits someone with a first-class degree from Oxford University. Yet here he is, acting like a parody of a defeatist Remoaner peddling the gloomiest kind of anti-British propaganda.
In his demands that Britain should stay in the single market and the customs union, Adonis shows contempt not only for the democratic decision of the British people but also for his party’s policy.
But by far the most offensive feature of his outburst was his crude attempt to draw a parallel between Brexit and the appeasement policy of the 1930s.
As a distinguished historian, he should know better, but Adonis has allowed his worship of Brussels to distort his historical judgment. He claims Brexiteers are the anti-patriots, like Neville Chamberlain and his appeasers in the late 1930s. The truth, however, is that Brexiteers want to regain our country’s integrity from German-led continental domination. It is the pro-EU zealots who are the real appeasers.
A classic example of the gap between Adonis’s intellectual ability and realworld practicality was the introduction in 2004 of university tuition fees, of which he was the principle architect, both as Mr Blair’s policy adviser and as one of his education ministers.
But as he now admits, the measure has spiralled out of control, burdening graduates with lifetime debts and encouraging prodigality among university bosses. ‘Why did we give university vice-chan- cellors a licence to print money and pay themselves £400,000 salaries in a decade when austerity has dominated every other public service?’ he has asked.
A good question, but perhaps he should take a look in the mirror.
After a difficult upbringing, he enjoyed success at Oxford University before working at newspapers including the pro-EU Financial Times and in politics, first with the Roy Jenkins’s SDP, then in local government with the Lib Dems, before joining Labour in 1995.
He has enjoyed a long career at the heart of the establishment ever since.
The pre-war arch-appeaser Chamberlain was also a supremely self-confident figure – utterly disdainful of opponents such as Winston Churchill. Yet he rightly became a despised figure for his epic misjudgment of Hitler.
Lord Adonis risks the same fate with his hysterical anti-Brexit posturing.