Brexit debate: Andrew Adonis vs Robert Tombs

Robert Tombs, professor of European history at Cambridge University, and Labour peer Andrew Adonis took part in a discussion on the following question: Should those who know their history welcome Brexit? Here is an edited transcript of their arguments in the debate hosted by ‘Our Future, Our Choice’ and Clare College, Cambridge:

Andrew Adonis: Robert Tombs has been very strident about Brexit in his post-2016 statements. He says joining the European Union was ‘an immense historical error, borne of exaggerated fears of national decline and marginalisation, and a vain attempt to be at the heart of Europe’. However, what I find interesting reading his book, The English And Their History, you will not be able to detect that Professor Tombs is a Brexiteer.

There is no statement (in the book) of the [hostility] towards the European Union, or of anything unnatural about Britain and its engagement with Europe. On the contrary, what we’ve (got) is a very fine textured account of Britain’s complex and constantly changing relationship with its continent.