Boris has beaten the ultra-Remainers at their own game by comparing war in Ukraine to Brexit

Comparing Brexit to the war was sickening. Luckily some liberal saints were on hand to call him out

Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/03/21

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When the PM compared Ukraine’s war to Brexit, both motivated by freedom, he said, I almost threw up. The idea of a politician using the struggle of those brave people to make a cheap point about Europe was so disgusting that not only will I never vote Tory again, but I might not vote at all – and spend my days on some Hebridean island shouting “Damn you Boris” at the sky.  

I’m not alone. A straw poll of important people on Twitter indicates that the entire country, nay Western alliance, is appalled by words that Guy Verhofstadt called “insane” and Donald Tusk said “offend the Ukrainians, the British and common sense.” The SNP’s Ian Blackford labelled the speech “morally repugnant”. Ed Davey, who runs the Lib Dems, compared Boris to Basil Fawlty. Michael Heseltine said “millions of Conservatives will be ashamed” and Alastair Campbell wrote that our prime minister “debases” himself and his allies. James O’Brien, the cuddly liberal bear who, when you squeeze his stomach, says “I hate Tories”, was “shocked” at the level of Boris’ “depravity”, and Lionel Barber, former editor of the FT and probably the most intelligent man Mr Barber has ever met, summed up the remarks as “cheap, historically absurd and pandering”.

Of course there is a big difference between using Ukraine to support Brexit and using it to bash Brexit or promote the EU. Enormous. I’m thinking of when Lionel tweeted “One incontestable fact: Putin’s war has reinvigorated the EU!” and James O’Brien replied “Imagine having to explain to your children why you chose Farage, Dorries, Johnson & Rees-Mogg over being an integral part of this” (in the Ukraine, he later said, “the desire to join the EU is clear”).

It was totally different when Alastair Campbell said Putin “interfered” in the Brexit referendum because “he knew the EU without the UK would weaken both”, or when Lord Heseltine, running with that theme, said “I am ashamed that the country that in my lifetime saved European democracy has now absented itself, and that others must now determine Europe’s response” to the invasion. Layla Moran, Lib Dem spokesman for foreign affairs, observed, impartially, that “the Ukraine crisis has made it really, really clear that we are Europeans and our future lies as a country at the heart of Europe.” And it was a different kettle of fish altogether when the SNP’s president, Mike Russell, drew parallels between Moscow’s claims over Ukraine and “the result of an eight-year-old referendum.”

Donald Tusk was on the side of the angels when he told voters in Hungary’s election (not his country, but the man gets around) that their prime minister was notoriously pro-Putin and Ukraine is “a war for our future, for Poland, Hungary and the whole of Europe.” And finally Mr Verhofstadt, in the same breath as condemning the Ukraine/Brexit comparison, pointed out, with an air of academic detachment, that “Brexit was about undoing freedoms and leaving the EU” whereas “Ukrainians want more freedom and to join the EU!”

None of these right-minded people would ever play politics with human suffering and, I’m pleased to say, none of them ever has.