Question Time: Stella Creasy and Buckland clash over Trump
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Historian Mr Tombs, a staunch advocate of severing ties with Brussels, teamed up with Lord Hannan of Clermont, formerly Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, for a debate entitled ‘Were we right to Brexit?’, with Europhile Ms Creasy and former rebel Tory MP Dominic Grieve presenting the opposing view. Commenting during an article written for the website of the Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIBUK) afterwards, Mr Tombs said: “Of particular interest to me was to learn what Remainers, or former Remainers, now think and say, and what evidence they can produce for their claims.
“Both Dominic Grieve and Stella Creasy, unsurprisingly, insisted that Brexit had been a disaster.
“Though Lord Hannan and I pointed out that none of the apocalyptic predictions made by the Remain campaign (including David Cameron, George Osborne, the CBI, The Treasury…) had actually happened, our opponents still insisted that we had taken a huge economic ‘hit’.”
The arguments offered by Ms Creasy and Mr Grieve will have been familiar to anyone who has followed the debate over the last six years, Mr Tombs pointed out.
He said: “That the City of London had supposedly ‘lost 7,000 jobs’ – a tiny proportion of the vast exodus predicted.
And, in fact, almost balanced by 5,400 new City jobs supposedly created by Brexit. Large international banks, indeed, have increased their London staffing.
“Mr Grieve also insisted that we had become politically isolated, despite our pointing to the leadership Britain has so evidently shown over the Ukraine crisis.”
Both he and Ms Creasy claimed Britain would have more ‘influence’ if we were ‘inside the room’ with the ‘other 27’ EU members.
Mr Tombs said: “Influence to do what was unclear, for there was no suggestion that the EU had been effective or united in its response to Russian aggression. ‘Inside the room’ our influence would have been stifled, not enhanced.”
Neither Ms Creasy nor Mr Grieve had attempted to defend the EU, Mr Tombs suggested.
He said: “Our opponents kept insisting on the ‘hit’ we had supposedly taken, and backed this up with reference to the cost of living crisis, labour shortages, and economic growth rates, all of which they claimed were disastrous and of course all a result of Brexit.
“When we pointed out that economic growth since 2016 had been practically the same in the UK and the EU, that inflation too was virtually the same (and food price inflation lower in the UK), and that labour shortages were being felt across the EU and beyond, this was disputed.
“Brexit had to be a failure: no other possibility was conceivable. Even when Lord Hannan quickly looked up the latest official figures from the Office of National Statistics on his phone, they were disputed. Galileo had a similar problem with the Inquisition.”
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He added: “It is tedious when debate comes down to a battle of rival statistics.
“Nevertheless, it is sometimes necessary to look seriously at these, as so much of the Brexit debate over more than six years has depended on ‘Project Fear’.
“It is still very much alive and kicking: ‘the data is very very clear,’ insisted Stella Creasy, ‘we have taken an economic hit.’
“She disputed my figures, and suggested that as an academic I should be more scrupulous in checking them.”
Mr Tombs said he had placed the sources of his data on the Briefings for Britain website, and challenged her to do likewise.
He added: “One final observation. Dominic Grieve said that ‘ultimately we could rejoin the EU’, though this was ‘not for tomorrow’. Rejoiners by definition take this view, even if it means reigniting the conflicts of the last six years.
“Stella Creasy, in contrast, distanced herself from this position, saying that there was no question of rejoining – the standard Labour line at present. But nevertheless, she too insists that Brexit is a disaster. Where is the logic? Why stick with a disaster?
“Because, as she implied, her priority is to brand Brexit as a failure in order to discredit Boris Johnson and the Brexiteers.
“As ‘getting Brexit done’ got the government into office, if the country can be persuaded that Brexit is bad (and this constant refrain seems indeed to be having some effect) it might get the government out of office – without Labour having openly to espouse the highly risky course of rejoining the EU.”
Characterising Ms Creasy’s stance as “party political”, Mr Tombs admitted: “One can hardly object, since she is a politician.”
However, he added: “It cannot be doubted that a Labour government would do its utmost to reverse Brexit surreptitiously, by attempting to rejoin the customs union and the single market, which would leave us in a worse position than in 2016.”
Express.co.uk has contacted Ms Creasy and Mr Grieve for comment.
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