Stop Comparing Brexit to the Reformation
Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative party (from 2001–2003) and current MP for Chingford and Wood Green, recently published an opinion piece for The Telegraph entitled ‘The Reformation was the making of modern Britain. Brexit is a similar opportunity’. His article is but one part of a larger trend of comparing historical English (and British) events to its departure from the EU. Those in support of Brexit seem, however, to have a particular obsession with the Henrician Reformation of the 1530s and ’40s when it comes to historical comparisons. The problem they face is the incompatibility between the two events, 500 years apart, which they mask using cunning omission and ludicrous vagueness which seeks to reduce the Reformation down to ‘the Papacy was powerful like the EU and we got rid of its power like we should with the EU’. In the course of this argument, the true causes, ongoings, and effects of the Reformation in England are conveniently ignored.
Duncan Smith has rightly been subjected to much ridicule as a result of his silly argument. Many have focused on the violence which surrounded the Reformation under the Tudors as although Mary I is known as ‘Bloody’, it was under Henry VIII that the legislative bedrock was established to justify execution on the grounds of heresy. Whilst it is true that trying to ignore the violence of the Reformation, which…
