Brexit and World War II

The UK's national identity is intimately bound up with its victory in World War II.  This is largely because that was the last time that we won anything important, even though the victory also belonged to the rest of what was then the British Empire, the USA, the Soviet Union and the Free French forces.

References to World War II have accordingly become a cliché of the Brexit debate.  This post rounds up some of the occasions on which the cliché has been deployed by supporters of the Leave side.

The EU is like Nazi Germany

• Boris Johnson MP, 15 May 2016
• Leave campaigners, 29 May 2016
• Boris Johnson MP, 18 January 2017
• Lord Mervyn King, 4 December 2018
• Mark Francois MP, 25 January 2019
• Mark Francois MP, 26 July 2019

Brexit is like Dunkirk

• Peter Hargreaves (Vote Leave donor), 11 May 2016
• Allison Pearson (Daily Telegraph), 1 August 2017
• Leo McKinstry (Daily Express), 7 August 2017
• Jeremy Hunt MP, 28 September 2018

The EU should be grateful to us because we liberated Europe.

• Daniel Kawczynski MP, 2 February 2019
• Bill Cash MP, 3 April 2019

We can cope with Brexit because we won the War

• David Davis MP, 18 January 2017
• Darren Grimes (Leave campaigner), 20 September 2018

Other

• The Sun references Dad's Army in a headline about David Cameron's EU policy, 3 February 2016
• Nigel Farage uses The Great Escape in his campaigning, 3 June 2016
• Group of Brexiteers claim they will show Winston Churchill's "iron will", 6 January 2018
• PM Theresa May compares cross-party talks to World War II coalition, 11 April 2019
• Boris Johnson sets up Brexit "War Cabinet", 29 July 2019