Jeremy Clarkson Says He Cannot Be Friends With Anyone Who Voted For Brexit
Jeremy Clarkson has said he cannot get on with people who voted for Brexit having experienced the consequences.
The TV presenter, who voted to remain in the EU, said he can generally spend time with people who have different opinions to him, although there is “an exception” – anyone who voted to Leave in the 2016 referendum.
In an article for The Times, he said: “It’s not so bad if they put their hands up and admit they made a mistake. But if I encounter someone who still thinks it was all a brilliant idea, I get so cross my hair catches fire and my teeth start to itch.”
He added: “Brexit hasn’t made our lives better in any way that I can see.”
In the piece – which is headlined, ‘Brexit makes me want to sit in a gutter and weep’ – Clarkson explained that he came to this conclusion after an experience linked to his farm.
The presenter claimed that when he was supposed to be travelling through the Channel Tunnel to Calais for part of his Prime Video series, Clarkson’s Farm, he said he ended up being stuck in “a gigantic lorry park full of trucks from every conceivable European country”.
As he and his colleague had to take filming equipment with them, he said he had to wait for two hours for “someone in a cabin to stamp our form” before they could even reach the tunnel.
They then had to do the same thing at the other end, once arriving in France.
He said: “I have crossed many tricky borders over the years and the paperwork always takes time.
“Iraq to Turkey took a moment, that’s for sure. And Rwanda into Tanzania was challenging as well. But nothing has ever taken as long as it us to get from post-Brexit England into France.”
The former Top Gear presenter also took aim at the government’s stance that Brexit is a success because “it’s better to be governed by a democratically elected parliament than some bankers in Brussels”.
He said: “I’m not sure about that. I’d certainly prefer the bankers to Starmer and Reeves. I’d prefer anything. The fourth form of my local school. My dogs. Trump, even.”
Clarkson has already made his opposition to the current government clear, having joined a protest over the Budget last November.
He opposed changes to the inheritance tax rules, and accused chancellor Rachel Reeves of taking the figures she has used to justify the Budget “from the sixth form debating society that she was no doubt a member of”.