Reader TTS

If you were reading the news today, you could be fooled into thinking the UK was going to burst into flames come October 31 of this year. That’s because the contents of Operation

Yellowhammer have been shared all over the internet, and framed as absolute certainty for no-deal Brexit. Labour MP Andy McDonald told Sky News “every area of life will be disrupted”; the

Liberal Democrats’ Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake said “the content is shocking”, and his new colleague Luciana Berger even ticked off Robert Peston when he, correctly, referred to Operation

Yellowhammer as a reasonable worst case scenario. “This is what the government themselves said would happen in 50 days time”, she warned. The only thing these reactions demonstrate is that

politicians are either ignorant of the fact Yellowhammer is not a definite state of affairs, or trying to alarm the electorate. Considering the amount of dire proclamations around Brexit, a

cynic might bet on the latter. Yellowhammer, after all, is the tool these politicians have been waiting for – a gloomy look at the prospects of the riskiest Brexit, including fresh food

supplies, medicine shortages, protests and counter protests and disruption across the Channel that they they can wave in the electorate’s faces. “Look, we told you so!” is what Remainer MPs

are thinking, convinced that Leavers will suddenly come to their senses on inspection of the document and want to revoke Article 50. This will not work for a host of reasons. For starters,

Brexiteers aren’t as bothered about economic pain as Remainers are. In the lead up to the referendum, Leavers received all sorts of bleak warnings about the price the UK would pay for

leaving the EU. Some think things can’t get any worse for them than they are now. Others feel that the shockwaves are worth it – that’s how much they want to leave the EU. Remainers have a

tendency to forget that Leave was generally a philosophically-driven argument, motivated by a quest for sovereignity and democratic control. It has always been hard to dismantle with

economic arguments. Much of the public is so angered by the suppression of Brexit, anyway, that they just don’t care any more if they’ll be poorer as a result. They’d probably eat baked

beans forever just to see the look on Dominic Grieve’s face as Brexit goes through. Then there’s the fact that lots of Brexiteers are desensitised to economic forecasts,  because predictions

were so wrong in the lead up to the referendum. The UK public has heard these sorts of dramatic predictions before, when politicians said that we should join the euro. The memory is fresh

in their minds. Over the last few years, there have been too many “Remainers who cried apocalypse”, and the result is that no one takes their advice seriously now. I suspect that no-deal

will be ugly, incidentally, but the whole point of Operation Yellowhammer – not that the government will get any credit for it – is that the country is prepared for said ugliness. The

thoroughness of the document demonstrates how much departments are gearing up for the possible challenges. What’s never acknowledged in all of this is that the majority of parliament –

including Remainer MPs – voted to hold the 2016 referendum. So they may tell the electorate Brexit means Armaggedon, but, by their own definition, they put Armaggedon as an option on a

ballot slip. How they reconcile this position, goodness only knows.