A former foreign office minster and Lord of the realm has compared Brexit to appeasement of Hitler’s Nazi regime in the 1930’s.
Lord Malloch-Brown, head of the Best for Britain group, made the comments after billionaire George Soros announced a campaign for a new Brexit referendum is set to be launched.
Mr Soros – who is reported to have given about £500,000 to Best for Britain, which was set up last year by anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller – said action was needed as EU withdrawal was “immensely damaging” for the UK.
The European Union is in an existential crisis and must reinvent itself to escape it. A “multi-track Europe” would allow member states a wider variety of choices that would have far-reaching benefits. https://t.co/eL0CgL6gWv
— George Soros (@georgesoros) 29 May 2018
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “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 said Mr Soros’s reputation as the “man who broke the Bank of England” in 1992, when the financier bet against sterling on the money markets, was an “unrelated issue” to the anti-Brexit push.
“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.”