Facts

Rees-Mogg speaking on GB News suggested that Ukraine would have suffered one of the worst defeats "for the Western world in modern history" if that UK hadn't left the European Union.

As Anand Menon, director of UK in A Changing Europe, made clear: "The UK insisted...in the Lisbon Treaty...that foreign policy cooperation could not get in the way of national foreign policy choices."

Verdict

Jacob Rees-Mogg was wrong to claim that Britain could not have come to the aid of Ukraine in the way we did  had we still been a member of the European Union.

We emailed Mr Rees-Mogg’s office offering him the chance to respond. The email was received, but no reply.

Additional Note Unable to point to genuine benefits from Brexit, Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove and others have taken to fabricating benefits which don’t exist or never happened. Hence the false claims repeatedly made by ministers about vaccine roll-out, trade deals and (in the above case) Ukraine.