An historian's lament

Stop mentioning the bloody War - please. Brexit is not the same thing - at all. Rhetorical analogies are not history, nor are they a guide to the present. So, what on earth is Timothy Garton-Ash going on about here?

Agreement, or even no agreement, with the EU is not "punishment," it is what is legally possible as a consequence of the British 'red lines,' our request to become a third country, and what is acceptable to the other twenty-seven national members. It is our choice, the consequences are the result of our actions.

And as for "Weimar Britain," good grief.

Am I exaggerating the danger by even hinting at a comparison with Weimar Germany? Indeed I am...

Well don't bloody do it then.

 But it’s surely better to overdramatise the risk, to get everyone to wake up to it, 

No it isn't. It's utterly misleading.

... rather than do what most of our continental partners have done for the last two years, which is consistently to underestimate the dangers for the whole of Europe that flow from Brexit – especially a mishandled Brexit.

Heaven forbid it should be mishandled after a week when, as Ian Dunt summarises perfectly,

The government had backed an amendment against its negotiating posture so that it could make its own Brexit plan illegal. It then whipped MPs to oppose an amendment supporting its white paper and had to rely on the votes of Labour MPs to defeat itself.

Then there's the Irish border, you know the one that led to the deaths of 3,500 people. The EU made preserving an open border a condition of any agreement. Britain agreed a backstop to prevent a hard border in December. Having signed up to it, May declared that no Prime Minister could possibly accept it, despite having accepted it. Then, in Parliament, supported an amendment that:

... made it unlawful to pursue a policy which would create a separate customs territory between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, even though this is precisely what the withdrawal agreement with the EU will do. Now this will presumably have to be repealed before any agreement can be signed. Rarely before have governments passed laws they intend to repeal before they have even reached the statute book. 

In the face of that, what is the EU supposed to do? Perhaps what it is doing, planning and investing in the infrastructure necessary to deal with the consequences of Brexit for them, rather than humouring us and offering to break its founding treaties to give us the impossible we demand. This is what Garton-Ash calls underestimating the dangers.

We haven't really moved on from this, have we?



Please, please don't use inappropriate historical analogies, especially about the Second World War. It doesn't help and tells us nothing about the pickle we are in. And while we are about it, don't mention the Holy Roman Empire either.

I’d also recommend a history of the Holy Roman Empire. That earlier European Union lasted so long because it proved capable of adapting to changing circumstances, living with Europe’s ineradicable diversity and complexity, while still maintaining its central purpose and mystique.

Oh lord, please make it stop.