Originally appeared at DWN, translated by Karin exclusively for SouthFront
Former London Mayor Boris Johnson has compared the extension of EU competence with the ambitions of Hitler and Napoleon. In classical British exaggeration Johnson said, whenever Europe was conceived as a unified empire, it always ends in a catastrophe.
In the debate about an exit of Britain from the EU has London’s former mayor Boris Johnson compared the influence of the European Union with Hitler’s continental claims for power. The last two millennia of European history were marked by repeated attempts to unite the continent after the model of the Roman Empire under a single government, Johnson told the newspaper “The Sunday Telegraph”. “Napoleon, Hitler, various people have tried this, and it has ended tragically.”
Johnson is the spokesman of the so-called Brexit supporters. He supports the campaign “Vote Leave” and is one of the most prominent opponents of Prime Minister David Cameron in the debate about the withdrawal from the EU on the British Island. Cameron campaigns for a stay in the EU. One and a half months before the British referendum on 23rd of June on the Brexit, polls see the two camps head-to-head.
Just days ago, Johnson had called the Brexit on United Kingdom membership of the European Union as the “great project of European liberalism”, while the EU had degenerated into an “obscurantist project of the 50s “, who’s expiration date has long expired.
In the interview with the newspaper “The Sunday Telegraph” Johnson again put the European idea into question. There is no “fundamental loyalty to the idea of Europe” this is the “eternal problem” of the European Union. “There is not an authority that everyone respects or understands. That is the reason for this massive democratic empty space,” Johnson said.