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03rd Feb 2019

Tory Brexiteer references WW2 and demonstrates total lack of historical knowledge

Sigh

Oli Dugmore

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - OCTOBER 29: Serbian MP Daniel Kawczynski, Eastern European Envoy, makes a speech at the Serbia Investment Day at Central Hall Westminster, on October 29, 2014 in London, United Kingdom. The conference is part of plans to foster business relations between the UK and Serbia, creating investment options in Serbia, to support the country's emerging economic development. (Photo by Peter Dench/Getty Images for Serbia Investment Day)

Sigh

Daniel Kawczynski, Shrewsbury’s Tory MP, tried to invoke the spirt of the Blitz and demonstrated he had no place doing so in the process.

The Brexiteer made incorrect claims about the aftermath of the Second World War, stating that the UK did not receive payments from the Marshall Plan – a financial program resourced by the USA to rebuild Europe and extend its sphere of influence against the burgeoning USSR.

Kawczynski said: “Britain helped to liberate half of Europe. She mortgaged herself up to the eye balls in process. No Marshall Plan for us only for Germany. We gave up war reparations in 1990. We put £370 billion into EU since we joined. Watch the way ungrateful EU treats us now. We will remember.”

However, the UK did benefit from the Marshall Plan. In fact, it was Europe’s single biggest beneficiary.

David Lammy tweeted: “Is this a parody account?”

English military historian Corelli Barnett told the BBC: “Britain actually received more than a third more Marshall Aid than west Germany. She in fact pocketed the largest share of any European nation.

“The truth is that the post-war Labour Government, advised by its resident economic pundits, freely chose not to make industrial modernisation the central theme in her use of Marshall Aid.”

You can prove anything with facts, Daniel.