Britain ‘On Edge of Abyss’: Hollywood Luvvie Hugh Grant Campaigns Against Brexit

LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 01: Actor Hugh Grant speaks to a local resident during a Libera
Leon Neal/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Hollywood actor Hugh Grant has taken to the campaign trail, fighting against the pro-sovereignty Brexit movement, supporting the Liberal Democrats and the anti-Brexit Tory defector Dominic Grieve.

Notting Hill actor Hugh Grant said that he is getting active politically for the “first time” because in his opinion the United Kingdom is “on the edge of a true abyss”.

“If Boris Johnson gets a majority it’s kind of the end of the United Kingdom both literally and figuratively, and I think there will be an inevitable no-deal Brexit with the catastrophe with the economy and jobs,” Grant told the Bucks Free Press.

“I’m just trying to do any modest thing I can to help prevent that, and so I’m going to a series of marginal seats where the contender has a very good chance of unseating a Tory,” he added.

The oft befuddled thespian also announced on Twitter that he would be supporting the anti-Brexit MP Dominic Grieve.

“There is courage and eloquence being a principled politician in a country where that is increasingly rare,” Grant said of Grieve.

“My little soundbite is that the constituents of Beaconsfield, they’ve got two choices, Dominic Cummings or Dominic Grieve, and I know which I would vote for,” Grant added.

Dominic Grieve had the Conservative whip removed from him in September for voting against the government on Brexit. Grieve campaigned on the 2017 Tory manifesto, which pledged to remove the UK from the European Union, saying at the time that “the decision of the electorate in the Referendum must be respected and that I should support a reasoned process to give effect to it”.

Grieve subsequently became one of the most enthusiastic and outspoken anti-Brexit campaigners in Britain’s parliament.

Despite Mr Grant’s claims, this is not his first foray into British politics. In November, the actor told Prime Minister Boris Johnson to “Fuck off“.

“You will not fuck with my children’s future. You will not destroy the freedoms my grandfather fought two world wars to defend. Fuck off you over-promoted rubber bath toy. Britain is revolted by you and [your] little gang of masturbatory prefects,” he had said.

Breitbart News reported that the 59-year-old actor has been a financial supporter of Britain’s membership in the European Union and has called for the complete revocation of Article 50, the legal process by which the UK would leave the EU.

Hugh Grant has also long campaigned against press freedom, joining the “Hacked Off” campaign in 2012, which wants to impose stricter regulations on the media after the country’s phone-hacking scandal.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

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