Even Remainers can’t want Britain on the rack

Europhiles appear to hope we fail in negotiations, but it is in the national interest to get the best Brexit deal

It’s decision time: do you stand with Britain or with the EU? The referendum is over. Brexit is happening. Withdrawal negotiations are about to begin. However you voted last year, you ought to want your country to get the best deal possible. If you don’t – if you actually want Britain to suffer – then I don’t know what to say to you. Except perhaps this: kick the Europhilia, my friend. Put Britain first.

When I was boy, I used to hear it said: “My country, right or wrong.” That’s daft, of course. If you think your country is doing wrong then you have a patriotic duty to correct it – and I cast no aspersions upon those who honestly believe that staying in the EU is the right thing for Britain. But there are people who seem to feel that they have no country at all or that the EU can do no wrong.

Exhibit A: those who say Britain has a big bill coming. We will have to part with some cash, very probably, but it’s odd how some salivate as they throw out higher and higher numbers as if to suggest that we should stop Brexit right now because it’s going to cost too much. The Financial Times, whose editor was awarded the Légion d’honneur for services to the EU debate, says it could be €100 billion (£84million). This is nothing more than conjecture. The European Commission’s own lawyers have conceded that such a bill would be legally impossible to enforce.

Exhibit B: those who believe everything the EU says. Why was Jean-claude Juncker’s account of a meal with Theresa May reported uncritically? Of course he said Brexit “cannot be a success” and that the Prime Minister is deluded – that’s his negotiating stance. Juncker hates Brexit, probably hates us for voting for it, and would like us to limp off humiliated and impoverished to deter anyone else from trying the same.

It is precisely to avoid such an outcome that the UK Government is taking such a tough stance itself. We are threatening to walk away with no deal in the hope that, in order to persuade us otherwise, the other side will offer us the best deal. This position is framed to serve the national interest. More journalists should honestly explain it.

Exhibit C: those who yearn for failure. This was palpable when Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency. Joy that Marine Le Pen was defeated was entirely justified. Her victory would have been a victory for a nationalism from the margins of politics, unleashing something dark across the continent. Not so welcome was the suggestion by certain Remainers that Le Pen and Brexit are analogous (they are certainly not) and Macron’s win was a popular endorsement of the EU (it was a protest vote against the protest vote). Macron, said the militant Remainers with an unsettling thrill, once called Brexit a “crime”. Well, here come the thumbscrews and the cat o’nine tails. Let’s tie Britain down and get on with these negotiations!

Why would any Briton want to see their country stretched on the rack? The id of the Euromasochist contains many parts. Pride: they insisted for decades that Brexit would never happen and then it did. A sense of loss: this was supposed to be their country, until the voters stole it from them. Superiority: I’m not sure I can take one more article alleging that Brexiteers are educationally subnormal. Metropolitanism: civilisation is a vegan café staffed by cheap Poles. And identity with otherness: Europe is better than Britain simply because it is not Britain. I have no doubt that if Brussels was to send in the tanks to put down Brexit, AC Grayling, the Europhiles’s barmy philosopher, would be on the streets of Westminster handing out flowers to the occupying forces, thanking them for liberating us from ourselves.

The voter looks upon all this with incomprehension. We voted for Brexit, didn’t we? And now it’s happening, shouldn’t we try to make it work?

Out on the campaign trail, Tim Farron, who has tried to turn the Lib Dems into the official party of Remain, was challenged along those lines by one Malcolm Baker. Mr Baker accused him of talking down the country: “I’m proud that we’ll be coming out of Europe,” he said, “and not have people telling us we have to pay £100billion. If that’s your policy I hope you get six seats.” One suspects that Mr Farron secretly regards six seats as a heady ambition.

Mr Baker added that he was a lifelong Labour supporter but that he’d be backing the Tories this time – and it’s easy to see why.

Theresa May is far ahead in the polls not only because Jeremy Corbyn is inept and Farron is anonymous. It’s because this is a khaki election. The issue is our imminent war with the EU negotiating team, and the public is rallying around the only mainstream party that appears to be on Britain’s side.

I’ll be accused of jingoism, but using the language of national interest is reasonable when the national interest is at stake. The interest of the country is Brexit and its failure would be a national humiliation. Nobody should wish that on their greatest enemy, let alone their fellow Britons. FOLLOW Tim Stanley on Twitter @timothy_stanley; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion