It is offensive and idiotic to compare UK to Nazi Germany
FOR the majority of the British people, the advent of Brexit is a cause for celebration.At last, on January 31, Britain will become an independent nation once again. Freed from the shackles of misrule by the EU’s bureaucracy, our Parliamentary sovereignty will be restored and our democracy revitalised.
But all that means nothing to the dwindling army of embittered Remainers, who have never been reconciled to the 2016 referendum result. Infused with their blind worship of Brussels, they view our departure as a moment of despair rather than liberation. For them, the occasion should be marked by cries of anguish, not the inspirational chimes of Big Ben.
Even the decisive outcome of the recent general election, when the Remain-backing parties were comprehensively demolished, has not lessened their fanaticism. In their ideological fury, they cling to the belief that Brexit will be the cue for economic disaster and social breakdown, followed by the rise of dangerous extremism.
That view was set out this week in an extraordinary speech in the House of Lords by Liberal Democrat peer Tony Greaves. Having wailed about people “crying at night”, he then drew an explosive parallel between Brexit Britain and the rise of the Nazis.With an air of sanctimonious foreboding. Lord Greaves declared: “I am fearful that on 31 January some things may happen in some places which could be reminiscent of things happening in Germany in the early 1930s.”
LORD Greaves’ false historical analogy says more about his mindset than political reality. It is surely grotesque to pretend that, because of our embrace of national freedom, we are on the verge of a descent towards the horrors of Nazism. Brexit is driven, not by power lust and hatred, but simply by the desire for self-governance.
It is typical of Greaves that he should come out with such offensive idiocy. A teacher and long-serving local councillor in Lancashire, he was made a peer in 2000 but given his epic mediocrity, he should not be a Parliamentarian at all. In his disdain for the will of the people and his Remain-fixated paranoia, he is a perfect symbol of so much that is wrong with the House of Lords, where the Lib Dems have an influence out of all proportion to their electoral support. His career has had unedifying episodes, like his vociferous support for Lord Rennard, the Liberal Democrat strategist accused of serial harassment.
Yet Greaves’ Nazi slur against Brexit is a new low. His analysis could hardly be more wrongheaded or insulting towards the British people. The arrival of the Nazis in power represented the triumph of fascist totalitarianism, bent on the goal of racial purity. Brexit is the very opposite. It has nothing to do with bigotry or discrimination. On the contrary, it is driven simply by the wish to return Britain to the independent status that existed before our entry into the European quagmire in 1973. Lord Greaves might note that it was precisely this status that enabled our country to play a heroic, central role in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Nazism was the malevolent agent of despotism, Brexit is the uplifting ally of democracy.
Compared with Eurosceptics, the EU has a far greater inclination towards dictatorship, with its unelected presidents and unaccountable Commission.
Lord Greaves’ entire bleak picture of modern Britain is ridiculous. We are not on the verge of the gas chambers nor violent one-party rule. We are one of the most tolerant, open places on Earth, which is why so many millions of migrants want to settle here.
GREAVES speaks anxiously of the supposed rise in hate offences recently but that trend is largely down to the pro-active move by the police to record any incident of friction, no matter how trivial. Other official statistics do not bear out his portrait of a nation seething with vicious divisions. According to the reputable Crime Survey for England and Wales, hate crimes have actually fallen by 40 per cent over the past decade.
Similarly, despite the growth in reports to the police, the number of prosecutions for hate crimes has also dropped, down from 15,442 in 2015-16 to 11,881 last year. Several of the most high-profile incidents in the aftermath of the referendum – like the spraying of graffiti on a Polish cultural centre – turned out to have nothing to do with race or Brexit.
Like many diehard Remainers, Lord Greaves inhabits a dark fantasy built by his own dogma.
Decent Britons should not have to put up with his baseless allegations of bigotry.
‘Brexit is driven by the wish to return Britain to independence’