Robert Tombs: ‘If Brexit is finished, then so is democracy’

Robert Tombs, who supervised me in my fourth year at Cambridge, was a handsome thirty-something then. I remember he gave me an odd look when I said I found Joseph de Maistre an attractive figure. 

For some reason, Dr Tombs now has grey hair and has retired, but history is the only thing you get better at as you grow older and he is on his best form these days. His The English and Their History is a masterpiece which, like Macaulay's History of England, replaced the latest novel on the dressing tables of fashionable young ladies. 

He is on great form in this interview with the post-Trotskyite magazine Spiked. It's so good that I cannot help ignoring the laws of copyright and quoting a lot of it. Please read it all here.

May’s deal seems to mean the most extraordinary set of constitutional innovations. It would give, for an indefinite period, power over a large part of our economy and legislation not only to a foreign power but also to an unelected committee. The EU will have the power to decide upon and implement a whole load of laws and regulations. We will be required to accept them and we will have to pay for the pleasure.

I cannot think of any historical precedent for this – certainly not in any democratic country. It is astonishing that any government could for a moment consider this acceptable.

The deal settles nothing – it is the avoidance of a reasonable settlement, which stores up all sorts of political problems for Mrs May’s successors. Perhaps it won’t last long. But if it does, it would mean a serious political disruption – we would have to reboot or remodel the whole political system around it. It could lead to the breakup of the two parties and the emergence of unknown new forces....

spiked: Do you think public opinion has changed since the Brexit vote?

Tombs: Opinion has not shifted much at all. Looking at the longer-term, according to the Eurobarometer polls, Britons have always been unenthusiastic about the European project and unwilling to give extra powers to the EU.
The Ashcroft polls, after the referendum, asked people why they voted. Fewer than one in 10 Remain voters said they had a strong attachment to the EU. Positive support for the EU is actually rather low in Britain.

The question for me is not how did Leave manage to inch past Remain, it is how did Remain manage to get such a high level of support. The answer to that is obviously because the government, the civil service and all its allies did everything it could muster. Foreign politicians and international organisations were all wheeled out to tell people that this was a disastrous idea.

I think if there were a second referendum, Leave would probably win it. Assuming the campaign was a reasonable one and the question was fair. But we can’t assume either of those things.