Is this the craziest defence of Brexit you’ve ever heard?

Where have all the Brexit defenders gone? With new, negative news lines landing virtually every day, this once-proud band seems to be in hiding.

The sunlit uplands merchants having gone underground, the rest of us are left to bathe in gloom. The last few days alone have brought a doom-laden trade forecast from the OBR, an energy trade body saying that leaving the EU has added £370m a year to the cost of Britain’s power supply and a warning that extra red tape is likely to cause a food security crisis.

Things have got so bad that even Keir Starmer’s Labour government has noticed. “Their Brexit deal harmed British businesses,” said Rachel Reeves in her Budget speech, and Brexiteer Rishi Sunak didn’t bother to argue in his response.

Yet some true believers still exist. Step forward June Shute.

June is a reader of The Connexion, an online magazine for British expats (or should that be migrants?) in France. She spoke up in response to an article by columnist Nick Inman, which asked for “cheerful souls whose lives have been immeasurably improved by Brexit” to make themselves known.

“I have yet to meet anyone who has become happier as a result of Brexit, other than Brexit supporters,” Inman wrote in his piece. “I see no gains, only disadvantages. If Brexit is such a triumph, there must be hundreds of thousands of cheerful people whose lives have been turbo-boosted? Who are they?”

June’s reply is a classic, so I will quote it in full here:

“Regarding Nick Inman’s request in October’s Connexion for people who are happier after Brexit: well, my husband and I, both of whom voted for Brexit, are no less happier than when we arrived in France in 2003.

“We voted for Brexit because we were under the impression that the UK would be able to control immigration and would regain sovereignty. That was a mistake and it did not work. However, since then, as far as we are concerned, life here is just as good as the day we arrived.

“The only people who do not like Brexit are the moaners who did not get their own way. They were so convinced they knew best that many did not even bother to vote.
June Shute, by email.”

In short, then: June voted for Brexit so Britain could control immigration and regain sovereignty, both of which she admits it has failed to deliver. She sees no other ill-effects of Brexit, but that is because she lives in France, and not the UK – an opportunity that her vote has helped to deny to millions of others. And anyone who complains about the lack of logic in the above is just a moaner.

After serving up this plate of I’m-all-right-Jacques with a soupçon of snark, June is probably more European than she would like to admit. But if this is the best the Brexiteers can offer, it’s no wonder that the rest of them are opting for embarrassed silence.