I am a big fan of David Lammy. I think he has spoken out courageously in the past on the issue of absent fathers and I applaud his opposition to Brexit. I even backed him to be the Labour mayoral candidate in 2014.
In contrast, I have no time whatsoever for Jacob Rees-Mogg and the rightwing ideologues of the European Research Group (ERG), whom even the Conservative chancellor Philip Hammond has referred to as “extremists” for their intransigence over Brexit.
I feel that this throat-clearing is necessary because I believe David Lammy may have gone too far this time.
On Sunday the Labour MP for Tottenham was quizzed by Andrew Marr over comments he made at a pro-remain rally last month.
“I’m just looking over there at Winston Churchill,” Lammy said at the rally in March. “On 30 September 1938 he stood in parliament and said we would not appease Hitler. I’m looking across to Nelson Mandela, who would not give in to apartheid. We say, we will not give into the ERG. Will not appease.”
Asked by Marr whether this was an “unacceptable comparison”, Lammy said that it “wasn’t strong enough”. He also directly referenced Hitler once more, saying that “we must not appease” the ERG, which he likened to appeasing the German wartime leader. “In 1938 there were allies who hatched a plan for Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia, and Churchill said no, and he stood alone.”
This was a reference to Rees-Mogg, chairman of the ERG, sharing materials from Germany’s main opposition party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a hard-right, xenophobic, anti-Muslim party. Rees-Mogg shared a video online of an anti-EU speech by AfD co-leader Alice Weidel speaking in the German parliament. In doing so he brought shame on the Conservative party. Indeed, some more voluble condemnation of Rees-Mogg’s actions by “moderate” Brexiteers would be welcome at this point.
I am with David Lammy on the AfD, a sinister organisation that has parallels with the European fascist parties of the 1930s. In fact, prominent members of the AfD have sought to play down and relativise Germany’s Nazi past. Björn Höcke, an AfD lawmaker, called Berlin’s Holocaust monument a “memorial of shame” and called for a “180-degree shift” in the country’s culture of remembrance. Moreover, AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland has previously described the Nazi era as “just bird poo in over 1,000 years of successful German history”.
However, drawing comparisons between the Conservative government’s appeasement of the British Eurosceptic right and wartime appeasement of Hitler and the Nazis is a step too far, even if Lammy does appear to be evoking the war as a rhetorical device and does not mean it literally. One can acknowledge that the far right is on the march across Europe while simultaneously believing such comparisons to be in poor taste.
A good debating rule – derived from Godwin’s law – is not to bring the Nazis into the equation unless you are talking about the actual Nazis, ie the National Socialist German Workers’ party led by Adolf Hitler. The AfD might arguably be described as neo-fascist, but it is wrong to imply – via its proximity to the AfD – that appeasing the ERG is comparable to appeasing the Nazis.
Opponents of Brexit – and I count myself as one of those – ought to measure their words carefully when drawing historical comparisons, not least to avoid relativising the past (ironically, one of the most offensive things about the AfD). However frustrating the Brexit process may be, and however difficult it is to look on as the far right – in Britain and elsewhere – is emboldened by it, we must never diminish what happened during the Nazi era by erroneously imagining our plight to be similar to that of Germany’s Jewish population during that period.
This is a question of historical sensitivity. But is also a question of keeping one’s powder dry in case things in Europe deteriorate further. The public ought to sit up and take notice when Nazis and Nazism are evoked. Flippant historical comparisons by prominent politicians will result in apathy, when what we really need is vigilance.
• James Bloodworth is a journalist and former editor of Labour blog Left Foot Forward