Penny Mordaunt’s big lie

In her memoir of her role as French Ambassador in London during the Brexit campaign, the top French diplomat, Sylvie Berman, describes Boris Johnson as an “inveterate liar”. The language is undiplomatic, but perhaps par for the course in the love-hate relationship between France and Britain over the centuries.

We have long got used to Mr Johnson’s highly personal idea of truth. It led to his ouster in the summer – the first Prime Minister to be dismissed by his own MPs and ministers in our political history because he was a liar. Nobody in Westminster has forgotten about that and the Privileges Committee is still investigating whether he lied to Parliament.

But arguably the single biggest lie at a high level of state was  in 2016 when Penny Mordaunt told the BBC that Turkey and its 76 million Muslim citizens were poised to enter the EU. Then Minister of State for the Armed Forces, she told Andrew Marr that Turkey was likely to become an EU member by no later than 2024. Marr pointed out that the UK had a veto over such decisions, as did all EU member states over any new accession. (They still do.)

Again, Ms Mordaunt lied, telling Marr that the UK did not have a veto: “We are not going to have a say.” Marr, always polite, said: “I thought accessions was something that each country could veto if it wanted to.”

Again Ms Mordaunt fibbed. “No. I do not think the EU is going to keep Turkey out. I think Turkey is going to join.”

Now we should be clear and admit that on both sides of the debate in 2016 there were truths, half-truths and downright lies. But Penny Mordaunt was responsible for the single biggest Project Fear lie in the pro-Brexit camp.

There were many reasons for the British vote to leave the EU. They included ending EU law and judges having any role in the UK and turning away from the European social market model, based on partnership between employees and employers.

But the key mover was immigration. As an MP in a Red Wall seat between 1994 and 2012, I never heard anyone spontaneously raise Europe on the doorstep. But immigration was a constant number one issue. It had been since the days of Enoch Powell. He targeted what we now call BAME immigrants, but by 2000, the word “immigrant” had become synonymous with East European workers.

Hundreds of thousands of Poles and other East Europeans had entered as tourists after the end of communism in 1990. They disappeared into the black, cash-in-hand labour market, doing jobs most Brits spurned.

In 2004 Britain allowed workers from the 8 new EU member states to enter, as did other EU countries, some after a short transition period. In contrast to other EU member states or Norway and Switzerland, we did not have any means of knowing who was in the UK. There was no workplace registration, no ID cards, no obligation to take out insurance policies to get health care treatment.

The Liberal Democrats, the Guardian and many on the Left campaigned against Labour’s proposal to have ID cards. The Home Office sabotaged it in any event by taking 4 years even to begin issuing them in 2010 after legislation in 2006.

Opinions are of course divided on ID cards, but after 2010 their absence added to the argument that the Government had no idea who was coming into the country or who  was here. This fuelled the fear, raised by Margaret Thatcher in 1970s, that Britain faced being “swamped” by immigrants.

Ms Mordaunt played on those fears. So, too, did Nigel Farage with his notorious “Breaking Point” poster, showing a snake of Middle Eastern men, women and children in the mountains of the Balkans as they fled the war in Iraq that Britain, including all senior Tories, had voted for in 2003.

It is true that for a brief moment there was serious discussion of Turkey joining the EU. When Recep Tayep Erdogan came to power in the 2000s, he said he wanted to create a pro-business “Muslim Democratic” Turkey, along the lines of Christian Democratic European states.

That too was a lie. He is a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood, an ultra-Islamist sect, and has no interest in any of the European Union’s values and rules protecting women’s and LGBT rights, free media or democratic norms.

By 2016 there was not a state in Europe that argued for or even hoped that Erdogan’s Turkey might join the EU. France, Germany, Austria all made clear they would veto Turkish admission to the EU. Britain also had a veto.

Ms Mordaunt is not stupid. She knew exactly what she was saying and why she said it. There were many reasons why 37 per cent of the total UK electorate voted for Brexit, but fear of mass immigration was one of them and Ms Mordaunt’s lie helped secure support for Britain to cut links with Europe in the Brexit vote.

There was a brief moment in the Liz Truss premiership when she offered a hand of friendship to President Macron in Prague at the European Political Community’s inaugural conference. She also toned down the anti-EU rhetoric on the Northern Ireland Protocol and on cooperation with France over refugees crossing the Channel.

If Ms Mordaunt is her successor, will we lurch back into the era of insulting France and turn away from solving any Brexit problems on the basis of adult dialogue with the EU?

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