One of Britain’s most relentless anti-Brexit campaigners Alastair Campbell has been mocked after appearing to question his long-held views.
The former Tony Blair spin doctor was speaking at an Intelligence Squared debate, when he began contemplating the rise of the far-right in Europe.
He told the Sunday Times’ Josh Glancy that the political consequences of Angela Merkel taking in one million refugees into Germany have been “pretty profound”.
“Here we are talking about ‘could Britain get back into the European Union?’ There is an argument to be made about whether it is developing into a European Union that we’d want to be in.
“You’ve got the Swedish Democrats now in Government… you’ve got [Giorgia] Meloni already in power; you’ve got the AfD [in Germany]… so high in the polls.”
Mr Campbell was asked to clarify whether he’s now concluding that Brexit “wasn’t such a bad idea after all”, to which he quickly answered “no”.
“I still think it was a terrible thing to do. Any by the way I think one of the worst things about it is that Europe has lost the influence of the UK within it.”
Many leapt on the remarks from the usually cocky and self-assured podcaster.
Left-wing commentator Aaron Bastani voiced confusion with Mr Campbell’s new argument, which “now appears to be that we should re-join the EU Because it’s moving right?”
He blasted the political centrist, saying: “These people don’t believe in anything beyond getting on TV shows, a nice kitchen extension and elite status games”.
“I feel sorry for the millions of well-meaning people roped in.”
Author Obadiah Mbatang described the clip as “magical”: “It’s like a whole load of pennies start dropping for Campbell. And then he just can’t follow through on the logic of his argument”.
“Almost contradicts himself tbh. Superb.”
Another Twitter user predicted: “You’ll be hearing a lot more of this over the coming years”.
“Remainers saying they don’t want to rejoin a “far right”-dominated EU. IN fact you might hear a few leavers saying we should rejoin…”
A fourth joked: “The Remain campaign didn’t go very hard on ‘Britain should remain so as to stop the bats**t Europeans losing the plot’. Can’t imagine why”.
