England’s rebel spirit is rising – and it wants a no-deal Brexit
In the face of political stasis, the seductive myth of Britain standing alone against its oppressors is taking hold
‘Wetherspoon’s founder, Tim Martin, has been on the road since last November, with the aim of visiting at least 100 of his boozers to make the case for no deal.’ File photograph: Finbarr Webster/REX/Shutterstock
In my innocence, I didn’t expect many people to be in a central Portsmouth Wetherspoon’s at 10.30am on a Friday morning. But there they all were, in their droves: passionate supporters of Brexit, there to hear the pub chain’s founder and chairman, Tim Martin, make the case for Britain leaving the EU with no deal. Martin has been on the road since November, with the aim of visiting at least 100 of his boozers. The day we crossed paths, he was traversing the south coast, moving on to Southampton and Weymouth: given that it has whetted the appetite of what remains of the country’s local press, drawn large crowds and shifted huge amounts of food and drink, the whole thing looks to have been an unlikely success.
Martin’s case was unconvincing to the point of tedium: a half-argument that ignored what a no-deal Brexit would mean for British exports, and too blithely dismissed all those concerns about supply chains, and chaos at UK ports, let alone what a no-deal scenario would mean for the island of Ireland. But on the level of political sociology, the spectacle presented was compelling: the hardest of the Brexit hardcore, many of them on the pints and riled to snapping point before the speech even got going, and then taken into incandescence by the posse of local Liberal Democrats interrupting Martin’s speech at every turn.