Parties' Failure To Discuss Brexit 'Terrible Abdication Of Responsibility', Says Michael Heseltine
Former deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine said the main political parties don't discuss Brexit as they are “frightened” of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK (Alamy)
3 min read
A failure to discuss Brexit during the election campaign last year was a “terrible abdication of responsibility” by Labour and the Conservatives, according to former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine.
He said the main political parties were “frightened” of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and getting into a debate with them about immigration, but they should instead “take this head on”.
Heseltine, a longstanding Tory cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, said: “They must not pander to it. They must not suggest that somehow they can do a deal with these people.”
Speaking to The Rundown podcast from PoliticsHome this week ahead of the publication of a new memoir, entitled From Acorns to Oaks, he said: “the more Tories flirt with Reform, the more they will lose to the centre ground”.
Heseltine, now 91, is a passionate Europhile who called Brexit an “act of self-harm”, and has repeatedly called for Britain to rejoin the European Union since the vote to leave in 2016.
Having been at the centre of the 2019 campaign, the issue was barely discussed ahead of last July’s general election, described as a “Brexit omertà” at the time by Anand Menon, director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank.
The BBC reported its viewers were contacting them in the run-up to polling day asking why Britain's relationship with the EU was not featuring in debates or interviews with party leaders.
Asked why he thought that was, Heseltine replied: “Because all parties were frightened of Farage and the immigrant argument.
“And I think this was a terrible abdication of responsibility, and it's still there.
“It is absolutely in my clear view that the political parties, the main parties, have got to take on Farage, and they have got to make people realise that this country, its health service, its social services, its law, commercial world, its political world, is now absolutely dependent upon people who've come from other parts of world in the last 30, 40, 50 years.
“They are an absolutely essential feature of our civilised... society.”
He said it was key that political leaders “get the language right” on immigration, adding: “There [has] to be control of borders. But what borders?
“There's no way in which it's going to be easy to monitor the Channel border, I think we need a much more ambitious European control mechanism.”
Heseltine called for a new version of the ‘Marshall Plan’, where American foreign aid was given to rebuild Western Europe after World War II, explaining that European aid money should be pooled and used “creating wealth conditions in the countries from which many of these immigrants come”.
- For the full interview with Michael Heseltine, listen to the new episode of The Rundown, out Friday
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