The book he reviews is by another pro-Brexit historian Robert Tombs, emeritus professor of French history at Cambridge: This Sovereign Isle, which seems to be a fantasy harking back to another age which probably never existed for most people. The book is about Brexit and Roberts helpfully sets it out for us:
"As he [Tombs] surveys Britain’s postwar cultural and political landscape, he tries to explain how it was that virtually the entirety of the British Establishment should have supported Remain, while socially and intellectually Leave seemed like a small band of insurrectionists and outsiders on the fringe of politics, albeit, as it turned out, a numerical majority. The question the book poses is not so much why were there so many Remainers occupying all the commanding heights of the British State in the decades before the referendum, but why were there so few Leavers?"
Tombs has written approvingly about Brexit before and has therefore lost all authority to write on it impartially as a historian should. His book looks like a justification for what most people think is a huge folly mis-sold to the British people by a lot of Eton educated charlatans.
Needless to say Roberts agrees with every word. Perhaps I can help both Roberts and Tombs to explain the apparent conundrum. The British 'establishment' (a lazy device used to set up a lot of straw men) were right and the leave vote was wrong as will plainly be shown over the next few years. The vote was won by a lot of lies, as fishermen across the nation have now realised.
However, the right or wrong of leaving doesn't apparently worry Roberts or Tombs and nor does Brexit's malign impact on the poorest in society. And you can see why.
Roberts for example, apparently thinks Eden was right to invade Egypt over Suez. He writes books about the "English speaking people" and believes the British empire was a good thing. You can see where he's coming from.
His world is the often fantasy one created by historians like himself. In many ways he is a Johnson-like figure. His books are praised for being beautifully written although not always accurate. A review in The Economist describes one of his efforts as "a giant political pamphlet larded with its author's prejudices, with sneers at those who do not share them and with errors."
In the Telegraph article is this stunning assertion by Roberts:
"The fact that so far not a single one of the many horror stories of Project Fear has materialised – at least as a result of Brexit; Covid is a different matter – underlines how utterly irresponsible and misleading Project Fear was as a deliberate government policy. Leave’s claims were put on the side of a bus and failed to differentiate between net and gross figures. By contrast, Project Fear’s came out in the form of solemn but politically skewed Treasury forecasts, and failed to differentiate between truth and total falsehood."
And how about this from the book itself:
"Tombs shows statistically how, had it not been for the extravagantly cataclysmic claims of Remain’s Project Fear, the Leave vote would have been significantly higher in the referendum, thus saving us from the debilitating division and discord that the actual 52-48 per cent vote triggered."
I would love to see the "statistics" behind that claim.
I am amazed how otherwise intelligent people can ignore the growing evidence that Brexit has already had a dramatic impact on our economic growth with literally hundreds of companies (and probably thousands) already shifting operations to the EU. Roberts probably reads The Telegraph which often studiously ignores any Brexit related bad news.
However, even they are starting to tell their readers the truth.
We have already seen the shortages in some supermarkets and this is a problem only likely to increase in the coming weeks.
The Telegraph report that HGV drivers who get stuck in one of the dozens of inland lorry parks the government has built to process and check export paperwork, are to be charged for the privilege: Truckers face £50 an hour charge waiting for Brexit customs checks. They are not allowed to keep engines running in winter to keep warm, there have been complaints about toilet facilities and social distancing while they queue in the rain to hand in customs declarations and other forms.
One haulage company boss is quoted:
“One truck took nine hours to get through the inland border facility [on Thursday] and it felt like scoring a goal at Wembley when it finally got out and on the ferry. Waits are only going to get longer as traffic increases."
Shipping companies like DPD, Schencker and Palletways are suspending shipments to GB because of he chaos, as reported by the FT recently. This is big news but totally ignored by Roberts.
Also in the last few day, Kate Hoey has an article in The Telegraph: The Tories have betrayed Northern Ireland with their Brexit deal. Ms Hoey, another great supporter of Brexit, says step-by-step, the province is moving further away from the rest of the UK. This is not even to mention Scotland which is also moving step-by-step out of the UK.
All of these things were foretold. What Roberts describes as "total falsehood" is coming true before his very eyes which he may eventually notice as soon as the scales fall off them.
The more I read this sort of easily disproved nonsense from men like Roberts and Tombs the more I am convinced that Brexit is destined to be a short lived blip in British history - although it will do untold permanent damage to our standing, our reputation and our wealth before its over.
