Leading academic slams Brexit as 'nonsense and nothing more than a Tory party policy'

A leading academic has given a brutal assessment of the reasons behind Brexit and has claimed that it has nothing to do with 'anti-elite politics.'

Speaking to Channel 4 News, professor David Edgerton of King's College London branded the whole debacle as a "Conservative party policy supported by Conservative voters and some others."

He added that it was ridiculous to use the subject to attack Parliament, the judiciary and the BBC and even compared it to policies enacted by Donald Trump.

In a video posted by Channel 4 on Friday, he said:

The idea that Brexit is an anti-elite project is a nonsense. It's exactly analogous to the Trump case.

It's completely fake anti-elite politics. Brexit is essentially a Conservative Party policy supported by Conservative voters and some others. That's the reality.

It's extraordinary to continue this nonsensical attack on Parliament, on the judiciary, on the BBC. 

A certain section of the British political class is suffering from terrible delusions of grandeur to the extent that they have come up with an utterly irresponsible programme of pretending to want to come out of the common market and wanting to send aircraft carriers and frigates to the South China Sea.

I mean it's delusional stuff. We've got to understand what our real place in the world is. If one was serious about leaving the EU, which I don't think the Brexiteers actually are, if they're living in a fantasy world, today now, we'd be inundated with government advisers as to what to do.

There's none of it there, except in the most rudimentary form. So there is no serious planning for Brexit, it seems to me.

The state has lost the capacity to think it through, and the Conservative Brexiteers have proved themselves utterly unable to understand what they've actually set out to do, whether it's in relation to Ireland or trade. 

And that's the great tragedy of British politics. 

Edgerton, who earlier wrote a book in 2018 about the history of 20th century of British politics, has since been praised for his comments

HT New European

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