Furious Brexiteer Ann Widdecombe just compared Britain leaving the EU to ‘slaves’ rising up ‘against their owners’

Brexiteer Ann Widdecombe drew intense criticism in the European parliament after she compared "slaves" fighting against their slave owners and "colonies" turning against "empires" to Britain leaving the European Union.

Widdecombe, who was the first Brexit Party MEP to speak in the parliament in Strasbourg after the elections, launched into a scathing and historically-awkward rant claiming that Brexit was as noble a cause as oppressed people turning on their oppressors.

She said: “It is right [to leave the EU] because there is a pattern consistent throughout history of oppressed people turning on the oppressor.

Slaves against their owners. The peasantry against the feudal barons. Colonies against their empires. And that is why Britain is leaving.

And it doesn’t matter which language you use, we are going, and we are glad to be going.

There is a small detail she may have missed about the British Empire and its integral role in the globalisation of slavery and colonial violence in the last few centuries...

Labour MP David Lammy was one of the first to criticise Widdecombe for her words, calling her "offensive and ahistorical".

Her words were "fantastically inaccurate."

And the Brexit party is an "embarrassment."

Others thought that invoking slavery as a defence of Brexit – which many have criticised for being a racist, xenophobic pursuit – was a bit much.

Last year, Widdecombe was branded a “racist” during her appearance on Celebrity Big Brother after she criticised Meghan Markle’s “background” and “attitude".

Earlier this month a theatre company cancelled her one-woman show in response to her comments about gay conversion therapy, saying it will not "provide a stage for these vile people".

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