HOW THE DEMONISING ANTI-BREXIT JEREMIAHS GOT IT SO VERY WRONG

The date of December 8, 2017, will go down as a great day in our history. It was the moment it became clear the United Kingdom is definitely leaving the european Union, and will do so on terms that will enhance our freedoms and safeguard our prosperity.

And yet throughout this week — following the apparent breakdown of talks on Monday — we were told that an agreement with the EU was hard, if not impossible, to achieve, and that Britain was probably heading down a one-way street to disaster.

This was the despairing cry of the BBC, the Financial Times, the Guardian and much of the broadcast media. Whenever members of the chattering classes were gathered together — in university common rooms, in London clubs, in much of Parliament itself — the prevailing view has been that Britain is doomed.

And the constant refrain has been that the Government has greatly overrated its bargaining position. In particular, it was said to have been deeply unrealistic to the point of stupidity regarding arrangements about the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

even a few Brexiteer journalists whom I respect were so taken in by this version of events that they turned their guns on Theresa May, who was pronounced by some pro-Leave Tories to be hopelessly out of her depth and outmanoeuvred by more adroit europeans.

Seldom before has the ingrained negativity and ignorance of our Left-wardly-inclined chattering classes been so exposed. Their doom-laden prophecies of the past few months reached an absurd crescendo this week. Now they have been shown to be laughably wrong.

As they were, of course, in predicting in the weeks before the 2016 referendum that Remain would easily carry the day. These often hysterical critics tend to have a very frail hold on what most of their fellow countrymen think.

how is it that mostly intelligent people, who presumably want the best for their country, can have read the runes so incompetently over so long a period of time? Why do they assume that Britain will lose every argument, and that might and right always rest with the other side?

The answer, I believe, lies in the decline of British power after World War II, the humiliation of the 1956 Suez crisis (when the U.S. effectively pulled the rug from under us), and the various economic calamities we have endured since.

These undoubted setbacks have bred in our intellectual classes — but not in the British people as a whole — a kind of automatic pessimism about our nation’s prospects.

FOR example, they wrongly told us, when the Royal Navy set sail to liberate the Falklands in 1982, that we were heading for disaster. This pessimism has run riot in recent months. Again and again we have been told that the Government was overplaying its hand, that a trade deal would not be available to Britain, and that we are, for all practical purposes, feeble supplicants at the court of Jean- Claude Juncker in Brussels.

It didn’t register with these doomsayers that the EU has a huge interest in making a trade deal as it enjoys a surplus of tens of billions of pounds in manufactured goods with this country. They assumed, without the benefit of any knowledge, that Juncker’s negotiator, the smooth Frenchman Michel Barnier, was smarter than our rough-hewn David Davis.

Nor did it occur to the legions of Jeremiahs at the BBC and in the Remoaner Press that much of the EU is in such a parlous state that it is in no mood for a fight to the death with Britain — even were it minded to have one, which it isn’t.

Spain faces disintegration because of the Catalan crisis. Italy (which is growing faster than Britain, though the BBC constantly claims it is) could elect an ANTI-EU government next year. Angela Merkel is struggling to form an administration in Germany, and faces a resurgent far-Right. President emmanuel Macron’s popularity is plummeting in France.

And all over europe the migrant crisis is boiling away, boosting the prospects of populist parties. The Czech Republic, Poland, hungary and Slovakia are ignoring what Brussels tells them to do about migrants. Barriers are being erected in defiance of the Schengen Agreement, which is supposed to guarantee open borders.

only people who know very little about europe — which, ironically, is the case with many of our most passionate europhiles — could imagine that the EU was shaping up for a do-or-die battle. Admittedly, there was a good deal of posturing on the part of Juncker and Barnier, but once the money (up to £39 billion over a number of years) was agreed, the show was firmly on the road.

As for the so-called Irish crisis, which so delighted Theresa May’s detractors earlier this week, and led to her being demonised across the media, this was greatly exaggerated.

Juncker and the Commission never seriously intended to allow the Republic to ruin a deal which they believe is vital for the well-being of the entire EU. Nor, when it came to it, did the Irish Republic want to pull the plug. Its newish prime minister Leo Varadkar (who heads a weak minority government) may have tried to throw his weight around, but he knows how reliant the Irish economy is on Britain, and had no interest in scuppering an agreement.

By the way, politicians and commentators who threw their hats into the air on Monday, when they believed Mrs May had been knocked out of the ring, should have the grace to concede that the deal she secured yesterday was better than the one on offer on Monday in several respects, the most obvious being that it secures Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.

Will the Financial Times — the Bible of the eurocrats — apologise for its sometimes unhinged apocalyptic warnings?

OF course, what happened yesterday does not constitute a final agreement. Much wrangling lies ahead. The Eu will offer some sort of free trade deal in order to protect its exports of manufactured goods. Britain will argue that crucial financial and other services should be part of such an arrangement.

But it is clear that we are now on the road. I accept there have been compromises, most notably giving the european Court of Justice very limited jurisdiction for up to eight years.

Yet, to paraphrase what the environment Secretary Michael Gove said yesterday, any eurosceptic would have been amazed two years ago to learn that we seem likely to leave the EU on such advantageous terms.

That we should be able to do so is a huge tribute to Theresa May, David Davis, the more sensible members of the Cabinet, and even our oft-maligned Civil Service. The PM has been subjected to intolerable vilification this week even though she was on the verge of pulling off a triumphant deal. She and her colleagues have persisted despite the brickbats of an intellectually incontinent Labour Party, half-witted Lib Dems and a gloom-stricken BBC.

how ironic that the high priestess of pessimism and Mad Queen of europhilia — the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee — should have been swiftly invited on BBC television yesterday morning. Given her prophecies of national disaster have been confounded, she should have donned sackcloth-and-ashes and delivered a public apology.

Will these people ever admit they have been mistaken? That they always talk down their country and assume the other side will win? That they know little about the EU which they profess to love? That they are — to be blunt — a collection of dyed-in-the-wool ‘misery guts’?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if such congenital moaners displayed a bit of support for the Government, and loyalty to their country, as it tries to secure the best possible deal?

Pigs might fly . . . And yet perhaps there are one or two fairminded souls even within the hidebound BBC who may dimly begin to realise that the United Kingdom can have a wonderful future outside the Eu.

We assume the chattering classes are powerful. They certainly think so. But I rejoice that their misguided certainty this country is heading for the rocks is in the process of being proven wrong.