A former Brexit Party MEP has been called out for sharing lies about the EU’s response to coronavirus.

Writing on Twitter, John Longworth – who served as an MEP under Nigel Farage until defecting to the Conservatives – claimed that, without Brexit, the UK would not have been able to respond to coronavirus in the way that it has.

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Longworth said:

But Longworth’s attempt to shoehorn Brexit into the coronavirus conversation has been robustly fact-checked by a legal academic.

Responding to Longworth, Dr Holger Hestermeyer said that the Brexiteer’s claims are wrong for a number of reasons.

Hestermeyer pointed out that the EU has approved the UK’s state aid measures to cope with the economic fallout of the crisis, while the UK actually followed the EU’s recommendations on drugs and equipment.

He added that Britain never joined the Schengen agreement which completely removes borders between EU states and so has never been subjected to full EU rules on border controls.

Indeed, given Britain’s strategic blunders – not signing up to the EU ventilator scheme, failing to implement a lockdown earlier in favour of a pseudo-scientific herd immunity approach, and not supplying the NHS with sufficient protective equipment – it seems a bit amiss to blast the EU right now.

Hestermeyer added that Britain is still bound by EU law under the Withdrawal Agreement and so Longworth’s claim that Britain is free to make its own law is – at this point in time – entirely wrong.

A global pandemic necessitates a global response. This is not the time for Longworth to bask in little England.

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