Mark Francois gets around, doesn’t he?

Francois, an MP, is the Deputy Chair of the ERG – the oxymoronically-named European Research Group, a group of hardcore Brexiteer Tory MPs responsible for delaying our departure from the EU. The number of members is a mystery – officially, it’s 54, but various media sources estimate between 60 and 80; more than enough, anyway, to sink any legislation brought by the government (indeed, more so than ever – with the Lib Dems having won the Brecon by-election, the government’s majority is down to 1). And that’s what happened to Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement (WA) – which is not a deal, to be clear, but just settling on exit terms for getting us out the door. She brought it before the House three times and three times it was squarely defeated – albeit with the vote against dwindling each time.

I say that the ERG are responsible for delaying our departure from the EU, and this is perhaps not entirely fair to them – it may be that their actions result in us never leaving at all. They would disagree, of course – blaming Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems, the government, the EU – but to that argument I would suggest that it is unreasonable to expect the opposition parties to vote with the government. The government is almost always the government because it commands a majority in the House – it is, to my eyes, the fault of the government if they cannot corral enough of their MPs to support their legislation. Theresa May had a slim majority on the back of her £1 billion to the DUP – the magic money tree evidently had some juice left within it – and so, in any reasonable circumstances, should have had been able to get the WA passed. But the ERG are not reasonable. They are extremists. ‘Spartans’, by their own nomenclature. They are a single-minded party-within-a-party.

Which brings me back to Mark Francois. An unremarkable MP, he came to prominence in January by, in response to Airbus CEO Tom Enders (a German) calling Brexiteers ‘mad’, invoking his father’s service in the Second World War – ‘he never submitted to bullying from any German, and neither will his son’. Francois was selectively quoting, of course. The full quotation is ‘Please don’t listen to the Brexiteers’ madness which asserts that, because we have huge full plants here, we will not move and we will always be here. They are wrong.’ Hardly bullying, is it? Francois attempted to spin these words by, as his ilk always do, chanting that they are trying to implement the ‘will of the people’ and arguing Enders is thwarting the vote of 17.4 million Leave voters. He was doing nothing of the sort, simply warning that the economic certainty of the Brexiteers (Project Wing and a Prayer, perhaps) is not anything close to reality.

The spin and lies are par from the course from these people. Few prominent Brexiteers are honest and consistent about the project (I was trying to be charitable – I can’t actually think of any). So while infuriating, my interest lies elsewhere, in Francois’s appeal to anti-German sentiment to make his point. He came in to the interview armed with the letter, which he then theatrically tore up. It wasn’t an off-the-cuff remark; it was the point. Linking the EU to Nazi Germany was deliberate, a bit of red meat designed to be thrown to the faithful. And then he appeared on Newsnight last week and gave me the title of this post. He referred to Jean-Claude Juncker – the President of the EU Commission and Brexiteer boogeyman – as ‘Herr Juncker in the bunker’.

Juncker is not German. He is Luxembourgish.

But that doesn’t matter to Francois. It simply does not matter. The argument – the image being invoked, actually, because it’s too flattering to even call it an argument, it’s just a collection of war-time propaganda and half-baked patriotism designed to stir the loins of the faithful – is that the EU is analogous to Nazi Germany, and that we plucky Brits have to channel our Dad’s Army spirit and get the hell out.

This is nonsense. It’s not an adult way to conduct political discourse. There’s no analysis, discussion, debate – it’s just shouting in to the void and trying to bring as many with you as you can. It’s entirely emotive, entirely image-based, entirely unfactual.

And the sad thing is that it worked. And still works. We voted to leave carried away by these currents. The Conservative and Brexit parties survive on the back of it. Mark Francois gets invited back on television because he makes a scene, he’s funny, he’s outlandish. He’s box-office. Remind you of anybody?

Maybe this is nothing new. Maybe it’s how politics has always worked. But it’s depressing to see that xenophobia still has a place in our national discourse, and that the appeal to our baser instincts is still a viable one.

(This is very enjoyable skewering of Francois by Will Self. It features a classic technique – completely and deliberately misconstruing the point being made in order to claim superiority. See also Trump on Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables’ comment)