Why so glum for those on Planet Remain? We’re loving it on Planet Brexit
IF you want to see how out of touch the chattering classes are, look no further than the No Deal issue.
The elites talk about No Deal as if it will be the worst thing to ever hit Blighty.
It will be a calamity, they say. A disaster. A “catastrophic national danger”, according to the feverish Guardian.
They say Britain is on a “cliff edge”. If we leave without a deal it will be a “car crash”.
It will bring the “hardship of war” raining down upon us, says one Brexitphobic columnist. These people seem to live in a permanent state of dread.
They’re forever fantasising about a desolate post-Brexit world in which there will be “riots, looting and disorder” (according to the Independent) as zombified Brits fight each other for scraps of food and bottles of medicine.
The rest of us, however, have a rather different take on No Deal. Across the country, far from the political bubbles and ivory towers inhabited by these anti-Brexit hysterics, people are far more chilled out about the prospect of No Deal.
You hear it in everyday conversations: “If the EU won’t give us a good deal, let’s leave without one.”
They say Britain is on a 'cliff edge'. If we leave without a deal it will be a 'car crash'
Brendan O'Neill
You see it on Question Time when the audience applauds a panellist who says we should walk away from the EU if it keeps messing us about. And you see it in opinion polls, too.
Much to the horror of the Brexit-bashing elites, polls show that ordinary people do not think No Deal will be the end of the world as we know it.
A recent Opinium poll asked people what we should do if Boris Johnson fails to wring concessions from the EU and to change the Withdrawal Agreement to make it more palatable to MPs.
A whopping 46 per cent said we should go ahead with Brexit on October 31 — Boris’s promised exit day — even if we don’t have a deal.
Just 29 per cent said we should cancel Brexit altogether and 12 per cent said we should continue with negotiations.
This echoes a YouGov poll from a few months ago. It asked what we should do if the EU refused to grant an extension to talks on the exit deal.
WE SHOULD SAY ADIOS
Forty-four per cent said we should say adios without a deal. Forty-two per cent said we should revoke Brexit and stay bound to Brussels.
This is all incredibly revealing. No, it does not suggest millions of us are reckless and crazy and hell-bent on jumping off the “cliff edge”.
Most Brits, including Boris himself, would prefer to leave with a deal, if a good one can be struck.
No, what the polls show is that there is only so much baloney from the EU that we are willing to take.
If Eurocrats carry on behaving stubbornly and arrogantly by refusing to reopen talks about the Withdrawal Agreement, then we should show some self-respect and walk away — that is what people are saying.
This captures one of the key divides between the elites and ordinary people today. The political and media classes dread No Deal because they have lost faith in Britain.
The elites should come over to our planet, it’s a far happier place
Brendan O'Neill
They view the UK as a tiny, pathetic island that could never possibly cope outside of the EU.
They think we need to be looked after by the apparently caring, maternal figure of the Brussels bureaucracy. And if we do the political equivalent of cutting the apron strings, we will be doomed, apparently.
In the rest of the country, meanwhile, people have far more faith in the nation.
They believe we are more than capable of being a sovereign, independent country that strikes its own trade deals and writes its own laws.
They see the country not as a useless little island, but as a plucky, resourceful nation that should reach out to the world without being beholden to any of it.
The divide over No Deal reveals how much disagreement there is between the political elites and the people today.
REMAINER ELITES
It is hard to remember a time when the chasm between Us and Them was as wide as it is right now.
The 19th Century Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once said the UK feels like “two nations”. In one nation there are the posh and well-educated, and in the other there are ordinary working people.
These “two nations” have entirely different “habits, thoughts, and feelings”, he wrote. It is as if they are “inhabitants of different planets”.
It feels like that again today. On the planet of the Remainer elites, No Deal will be terrible, Boris is the worst PM ever, and anyone who disagrees is probably a racist.
But on the planet inhabited by the rest of us, No Deal will be fine. And support for the Boris-led Conservative Party is rising. Surging, in fact.
The latest Britain Elects opinion poll shows that 42 per cent of us would vote for the Tories, compared with just 28 per cent for Labour.
MOST READ IN OPINION
From their increasingly isolated planet, the chattering classes rage against No Deal, denounce Boris as “far Right”, and bad-mouth Britain.
But their shrill cries make no impact on our planet. In our more sane world, we still want Brexit to happen and we think Britain is a good, decent, capable country.
The elites should come over to our planet. It’s a far happier place.
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