Tombs says Europe is turning right as we in Britain are veering sharply to the left. In France and Italy this is certainly true, but not in Poland or even Hungary where Orban is coming under real political pressure.
He says:
"Growing numbers of citizens across Europe are realising that membership of the EU brings economic stagnation, political impotence and social upheaval. The Eurozone’s financial policies and the heavy-handed regulation of the economy have turned Europe into a low-growth or no-growth zone. The failure to control its borders has made immigration a burning topic. Mass protests and even violence have had little effect, so voters are moving to the populist Right. As President Macron repeatedly emphasises, it is the EU that is at stake, and his uncompromising pro-EU stance is a prime cause of his unpopularity."
I am not sure this is as true. Polls show the EU is more popular now then is was in 2016. Brexit, if anything has strengthened the concept of the EU across Europe. He sees Brexit as the "first successful revolt" and no doubt will think Marine Le Pen's victory in the first round of elections reinforces that notion.
Everything here is good he suggests, but says Tory remainers won’t defend Brexit. But if he's right, and it's all going so well, why does it need defending?
Tombs argues that Brexit hasn’t failed at all. The fact that a sizeable majority now think it was a mistake is down to ‘propaganda’. People are apparently so dim that they can’t decide for themselves if all of the promises made in 2016 came true or not.
This is him about voters turning away from the Tories:
"These are the people who will not be voting Conservative, a mass of disillusioned voters who are not pro-EU, but have been persuaded by eight years of unscrupulous propaganda that Brexit has failed.
"This is demonstrably false, as is seen in the latest official figures, which show trade in goods stable and in services buoyant. But who in the government, with the exception of Kemi Badenoch, is ever heard saying this? The Remainers in the Conservative Party will not defend Brexit. They have allowed negative propaganda to go unchecked, even from their own officials. Rather than defending their party’s most important act in 14 years of government, they allow it to be used as a weapon by the opposition. They are the authors of their own defeat, and will share the blame for the ensuing damage."
Everything is tickety-boo according to him. The UK economy is “as good or better than that of the Eurozone. Trade with the EU has not measurably declined, while opportunities for trade with more dynamic regions have opened up.”
This is really delusional stuff. The government since 2019 has been almost wholly made up of Brexiteers. Johnson purged the party of anyone vocal about staying in or close to the EU. They have had the entire machinery of government to help get their message across and 350-360 MPs - all pro-Brexit, but unable to 'sell' the benefits of it, according to Tombs. He doesn't seem to accept that it might be because there aren't any.
The Tories also have the sympathetic right-wing press, pumping out relentless pro-Brexit anti-EU 'propaganda' as unscrupulous as you like. Yet, despite all of this, a majority of voters in every region, in every social class, and in every age group under 65, think Brexit was a mistake, which it very clearly was. Why so?
I suggest it's because they can see the inflated claims about Brexit made by both the leave campaigns in 2016 have proven to be wrong. And not just slightly wrong either. The NHS is broken along with everything else. There is no extra funding because Brexit has cost this country a fortune.
Mr Tombs is a committed Brexiteer and one of the founders and co-editor of Briefings for Britain (formerly Briefings for Brexit) - a website run by anti-EU academics. From his contributions it's pretty obvious where his sympathies lie. A lot of his articles argue that Britain hasn't declined and isn't declining. Last November he claimed "Britain’s relative power, compared with our traditional peers—France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain—has actually increased."
He is Professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and a couple of years younger than me but his take on life in Britain since the late 1940s is totally different to mine and I suspect most of our contemporaries.
