More Brits Believe the Earth is Flat than Think Brexit is Going Very Well

Hardcore Brexiteers are becoming an increasingly endangered minority, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to our major political parties and news organisations

A majority of British people believe Brexit is going badly and would like to rejoin the EU. That’s the clear evidence from multiple recent opinion polls.

In fact so badly is it now going, that according to one poll published this week, just two per cent (2%) of voters still believe that Brexit is going “very well”.

For context that means more voters now believe the Earth is flat (3%), or the population is being secretly controlled by the dispersal of ‘chemtrails’ (4%) than believe that the Brexit project is fully going to plan.

This steadily shrinking support for Brexit can be seen across all demographics and nations in the UK, yet as voters head one way, our national political parties are heading in the complete opposite direction.

In England, where recent Omnisis polling suggests a clear majority of voters would now like to rejoin the EU, not a single major political party represents that view.

Both the Conservative and Labour parties completely oppose any future reintegration with the EU, while the Liberal Democrats also oppose the UK fully rejoining. Even the Green Party, which officially supports rejoining the EU at some point, is currently only committed to doing so once the “political situation is favourable”.

So while if you are among the 2% of voters who still believe that Brexit is going “very well” you will have no shortage of options at the next general election, if you’re among the around six-in-ten voters who would like to rejoin the EU, then you will struggle to find anyone to represent your views.

This growing disparity between where public opinion actually lies and where it is perceived to lie in Westminster, is becoming more and more apparent.

In recent weeks the formerly respected academic, turned right-wing commentator, Matthew Goodwin, has been handed multiple columns and broadcast media appearances to expound on his theory that a liberal “new elite” is now dominating the national conversation, while remaining wildly out of line with public opinion.

Yet on the biggest political question of our era this so-called ‘new elite’ is in fact far more in touch with political opinion than the actual elite in control of Britain’s political parties and national media.

This can also be seen on other issues, including immigration and asylum, where recent polls suggest the public takes a far more nuanced position than either Goodwin, or the actual elite would ever give them credit for.

It can also be seen across our media, where the vast majority of outlets remain committed supporters of both Brexit and the Conservative Party, despite polls suggesting the public increasingly takes the opposite view.

But it is on remaining outside the EU where the big divide between public opinion and the national debate is most glaringly obvious.

For years we were told that the ‘will of the people’ demanded, not just that the UK should leave the EU, but that it should do so on the most hardline and ruinous terms possible.

And we were told that on the basis of needing to fulfil one vote by a narrow majority of voters way back in 2016.

Yet now that seven years have passed since that referendum, and now that a much clearer majority of voters believe that leaving the EU was a mistake, there is nobody left to speak for that majority opinion.

Now only is there no-one in Westminster willing to represent these shifts in opinion, but the political debate continues to take place as if they never happened.

A good example of this came earlier this month when the Home Secretary claimed to be talking for the “silent majority” in Britain.

In reality, the actual majority does not believe the Home Secretary represents them, with just 15% of voters saying they think she is doing a good job.

Yet like Goodwin, who claims to be talking for ‘real’ voters in the ‘Red Wall’, while ignoring polls showing voters in those areas actually want a Labour Government and to rejoin the EU, the people claiming to speak on behalf of a “silent majority” in Britain have never felt more out-of-touch with the actual views of voters.

The truth that dare not speak its name in British politics is that when it comes to public opinion on Brexit, it is not so much that Remainers are now a “silent majority”, as they are an entirely silenced one.