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Actor Hugh Grant sets out why today’s General Election may be the last chance to save Britain from the lies engulfing it.
1. “Who do you think you are telling us how to vote?”
I know. And I agree. Sorry.
Like almost everyone, I had very little interest in our relationship with the EU three years ago. And when the referendum loomed out of nowhere I horrified my metropolitan elite chums by finding myself bewitched by some of the Brexiter slogans.
Then I started reading. Then I got worried. Then I got angry. Now, here I am, scarlet at the gills with rage at the lies and the flagrant irresponsibility.
To me, Brexit is a giant con that will hobble our economy, break up the UK and tragically sedate the proud British lion. Find an economist who disagrees. It’s idiotic. Boris Johnson knows as much and is on record saying it, but to make himself head boy he is ready to do anything, say anything, and at any cost.
Which brings us to the other thing: this rump of the Tory Party and their ruthlessness in casting aside the freedoms it has taken better men than them centuries to win and then protect.
Proroguing Parliament was when I snapped. I don’t want to live under Dominic Cummings’ edicts, lovely man though he seems to be. I have become very attached to this damp island with its essential decency and tolerance and its Heath Robinson constitution. I don’t want to bring my children up in Singapore-on-Thames. I would greatly prefer it if our Prime Minister wasn’t also Personal Suppository to the President of the United States.
I’ve lived here all my life and paid my taxes like a good boy. So, until the police come to arrest me for treason, I’ll say what I want to say. No one has to listen. (Deep breath, wipes spittle from corners of mouth).
2. “I might not like it, I might think it’s disastrous for the country, but isn’t it undemocratic not to honour the result of the 2016 referendum?”
In no particular order:
No one wanted the referendum in the first place except a few prostatic old boy scouts on the far-right. Opinion polls from early 2016 show that our relationship with the EU was in the top 10 list of people’s concerns for less than 3% of the population.
The official leave campaign, Vote Leave – headed by Pinocchio and Michael Gove – was found guilty by the Electoral Commission of overspending, and heavily fined. The police may yet prosecute individuals.
The other big leave campaign, Leave.EU – headed by Nigel Farage and Arron Banks – was found guilty of multiple counts of data mishandling by the Information Commissioner and given maximum fines. It has also been the subject of a major inquiry by the National Crime Agency into an £8 million donation that Arron Banks made to the campaign. Although the NCA did not find any specific breaches of electoral law in respect of that donation, it refused to rule out investigations into other allegations of criminality against Banks.
80% of our print press is owned by curiously domiciled billionaires – few of them even British – for whom Brexit is both financially and ideologically desirable. So their obedient journalists followed their lines: Turkey was about to join the EU; if we left, £350 million a week would go to the NHS; hundreds of EU laws had been imposed on us against our wills (name one – just one), and so on.
It’s really complicated, especially when the air is thick with deliberate misinformation. What if 70 consecutive national opinion polls since then are right? What if Britain has now sifted the true from the false, the Customs Union from the Single market, Norway from Canada from the status quo, and wants to remain?
Wouldn’t it be UNdemocratic not to give the country the right to say so?
3. “So how do we get to a second referendum?”
If we all (or just 46,000 of us, according to some experts) vote tactically today, Pinocchio will not get a majority and a hung Parliament will follow.
And a hung Parliament almost certainly means a second referendum.
4. “Voting tactically means relying on those tactical voting sites for advice. But why should we trust them? Aren’t they all Lib Dem sorcery?”
I also scratched my head over some of their recommendations. If the reds came a close second in a certain constituency in 2017, and the yellows a distant third, how on earth can the reds now be asked to lend their votes to the yellows?
I did more reading and spoke to some people with dandruff, and here’s what I discovered: this isn’t a normal General Election. Brexit sits like an incubus on its back. People’s Brexit opinions will greatly skew normal voting patterns. Many a Remainer Blue will vote Yellow (but never Red) for that reason. They did in the European parliamentary elections, and many will do again.
Crucially, recent independent constituency polling bears this out. So, even though the likely voting in some constituencies is much clearer than in others, we should trust these sites. We have to – specially in the 50 or so seats where a Tory is wobbling.
The alternative is Priti Patel’s pleased face on Friday.
5. “I don’t care for Johnson and his gang. They seem clammy and their eyes move a little too independently for my liking, but if I don’t vote Tory won’t Jeremy Corbyn steal all my money and give my house to a terrorist?”
I hear this a lot from moderate, Remainy Conservative voters.
I went back to my political professors and psephologists on this and, without looking up, they simply showed me the Paddy Power page on their phones. A Labour majority is, at best, at 20/1. Even if Corbyn teamed up with the SNP, a Labour majority government is almost impossible.
Corbophobes can relax this Thursday and vote out a Tory without fear.
6. “So what DO we want?”
The dream is another hung Parliament, one of two versions.
Version one: Boris Johnson is back where he started – the leader of the largest party but with no overall majority. And no friends. (Even the DUP now hate him). He re-proffers his Brexit withdrawal agreement and the Commons amend it and it finally passes, but conditional on a second referendum.
Version two: Corbyn and the SNP are given just enough temporary life-support by the Lib Dems to get him as far as a second referendum.
These are the best options Remainers can now hope for. After a second referendum, whatever minority government will have escorted us that far will very likely disintegrate and we would have another General Election. But (significant pause) almost certainly with new leaders.
7. “And if we did get a second referendum, and vote leave again?”
Well then, game over. I am a democrat. I shut up.