REMOANERS’ BREXIT NAZI SLUR
Peer leading campaign that’s funded by Soros compares quitting EU with appeasing Hitler
THE campaign to stop Britain leaving the EU yesterday caused outrage by comparing Brexit to the appeasement of Hitler.
Former foreign office minister Lord Malloch-Brown used the slur as part of an attempt to highlight the consequences of Britain ‘shutting itself off’ from the continent.
The peer threatened that opponents of Brexit would keep fighting until the referendum decision was overturned.
Lord Malloch-Brown, chairman of the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain, claimed democracy had ‘a history of U-turns’.
The attack came just days before the campaign, which is bank-rolled by financier George Soros, launches its push for a second referendum to keep the country inside the EU.
Last night, furious Eurosceptics said the ‘absurd’ and ‘crass’ comparison between Brexit and the appeasement of Nazi Germany showed the desperation and weakness of the Remainers’ arguments.
Lord Malloch-Brown made his remarks in an interview with the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He said Britain needed to stay close to the EU because instances such as appeasement showed what happened when the UK tried to shut itself off from the continent.
He told the BBC: ‘Britain’s history as an island nation adjacent to mainland Europe is when we try to, sort of, pull away from Europe’s problems and close ourselves off to them they have a horrible habit of infecting us anyway.
‘Appeasement in the 1930s, you name it. For centuries Britain has ignored events on continental Europe at its peril.’ He added: ‘Democracy is a history of U-turns.’
He said Britons had been ‘very badly let down by their elected politicians on all sides’ and it was right for them to have a final say whether the deal was good or not. He also claimed that even if his side lost another Brexit referendum, the new generation would keep fighting until they won.
He added: ‘The demographics are shifting in a way that makes it clear there is going to be a pro-EU majority in this country, and only a growing one as the years ago by.
‘I already feel this is really a young people’s fight, but people like me can hold the ring and encourage them to get stuck in.’
Mr Soros – who has given £800,000 to Best for Britain – has promised that it will kickstart the campaign for a second Brexit referendum ‘in the next few days’. The Hungarianborn American earlier this week pledged to step up his efforts to stop the UK leaving the EU.
Lord Malloch-Brown yesterday claimed Mr Soros’s reputation as the ‘ man who broke the Bank of England’ was an ‘unrelated issue’. In 1992, the financier made £1billion by betting against sterling on the money markets.
Lord Malloch-Brown said: ‘ He broke the Bank of England as a financier because the British pound was over-extended. It wasn’t credible. He broke the pound, not the Bank of England, I should say.
‘He is someone who has devoted decades to an extraordinary global philanthropy which has fought for democracy and open values.
‘So, he’s earned his spurs, he is one of the great liberal, philanthropic voices in the world, and it’s a strange Britain that has closed its mind to listening to even individuals like that.’
Pro- Brexit campaigners last night said Lord Malloch-Brown ‘ought to know better’ than to make such a comparison.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: ‘I’m thinking that Lord MallochBrown has clearly lost his marbles and his history books. The Nazis sought to oppress nations, we want to liberate Britain.’
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who chairs the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Conservative backbenchers, said: ‘It’s surprising that a man as intelligent as Lord Malloch-Brown does not realise that making these sort of comparisons shows the weakness of his argument. It makes him look weak.’
Tory Peter Bone branded Lord Malloch- Brown’s remarks ‘absurd’. He said: ‘It was a rather extraordinary statement with no relevance to fact. I think he was trying to say that we were withdrawing from Europe, but we want actually a deep and special relationship with the EU.’
John Longworth of pro-Brexit group Leave Means Leave said: ‘This really is a crass comparison. Leaving the EU is not about closing ourselves off. It is about taking back control and becoming a global, more outward-looking Britain.’
Lord Malloch-Brown, who was a foreign office minister under Gordon Brown, has been described as ‘the very incarnation of what made people vote Leave in the first place’. As a minister he provoked anger by spending £10,000 on refurbishing his grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty Arch.
Last week the Daily Mail published leaked papers that exposed Best for Britain’s £5.6million sixmonth plan to stop Britain leaving the EU. It wants to persuade MPs to vote down the Prime Minister’s deal in October. This would throw Brexit into chaos.
Prime ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain appeased Nazi Germany in the 1930s by standing by when the Hitler marched into the neutral Rhineland and agreeing to the partition of Czechoslovakia.
‘Fought for democracy’
THIS paper is frankly bewildered by a leading Remain supporter’s attempt to liken Brexit to the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
If anything, you would think the comparison might apply more fittingly to Lord Malloch-Brown’s own camp, as he and his defeatist followers urge the Government to submit to an empirebuilding, anti-democratic foreign power.
But then it’s fair to guess this neverelected ex-Labour minister, who now runs the mendaciously named Best for Britain campaign (substantially funded by the Hungarian-born American George Soros), was not making a serious historical point.
No, he was merely resorting to cheap playground abuse. Could there be any clearer sign that he and others like him, who want a second referendum to reverse the first result, have lost the argument?
For yet more evidence voters were right to reject the EU, look no further than yesterday’s OECD growth forecasts.
Yet again, the global economics forum is forced to admit it has been too gloomy about Britain’s prospects – and too optimistic about the belated recovery in the eurozone, which is already faltering.
Indeed, while the UK has enjoyed steady growth for at least six years – and an unemployment rate half that of France – Italy has stagnated for 16 years since it joined the disastrous euro (championed, needless to say, by Lord Malloch-Brown).
Meanwhile, as even Mr Soros admits, the EU is in an ‘existential crisis’, amid growing unrest over Germany’s dominance and mass migration inflicted by Brussels.
Is there any good reason why Britain should remain a part of this mess?
Lord Malloch-Brown’s remarks are as offensive as they are historically illiterate.