AS I stumble towards the laptop, a Tory MP on the radio is going on about how ‘technology’ will solve the backstop. I didn’t catch his name and can’t be bothered investigating as those lemming loons all look and sound much the same.
The notion that a bit of unspecified technology can solve the Brexit logjam over the border with Ireland is the sort of flapdoodle you hear occasionally from the likes of Boris Johnson (it wasn’t Johnson on the radio just now as you cannot help but recognise him).
As much as one man on a ledge can understand anything, and that’s far from a given, the backstop is a sort of insurance policy that in effect pretends Northern Ireland remains part of Europe after Brexit. I hope that is approximately right, as keeping up/staying awake while contemplating these Brexit vagaries can be difficult.
It strikes me that relying on nameless technology is about as useful as summoning up Harry Potter spells – “Expecto Magickus Bollocksarmus”, or something.
This morning’s headlines contain two words you don’t often see yoked together – ‘Theresa’ and ‘Triumph’. The Daily Mail splashes that uncommon coupling across its front page, adding below that the prime minister “unites her party, crushes Corbyn…and tells EU: let’s do a deal.”
I am not sure she has done any of those things, and if she did ‘crush’ Jeremy Corbyn, it was only because 14 Labour MPs rebelled and voted with the government.
Mrs Maybe secured what the Mail calls “a dramatic victory” when MPs voted to back a Brexit deal that replaces the backstop. In other words, they voted to back something that reverses her previous position – and they voted to back something the EU has said it won’t agree to.
The food writer Diana Henry often cooks up a good political tweet. This morning on Twitter she says of that ‘Theresa’s Triumph’ headline: “In what universe?”
A good point. I am guessing the universe in question is the Tory Brexiteer one where all sense was long since lost in that fissiparous quarrel among shouty fools.
The shoutiest fool of them all, and it’s a tough gig to secure, is the MP Mark Francois. Last week the German CEO of Airbus, Tom Enders, who employs 14,000 Brits, with the supply chain adding an estimated 110,000 more jobs, expressed his despair over Brexit.
This caused Francois to splutter at the TV cameras: “My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German. Neither will his son.”
He then ripped up a widely-reported letter from the German boss of Airbus. This sort of big-dick swagger would be beyond parody in normal times. Is it horribly petty to take comfort in the speaker of such stupid words having a name that sounds French? Oh, probably, but frankly, we should be past caring by now. And anyone who mentions the war should be banned from speaking further, especially as the whole point of European unification was to avoid the possibilities of further wars.
Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing how Theresa’s Triumph (the Labour rebels’ edition) turns out.
And now over to Brussels.
“She’s at the back door again. Quick, turn out the lights. She’ll only drone on and on about how she now knows what she wants. And what she wants is the thing she already agreed not to ask for. If we pretend we’re not in, perhaps she’ll go away.”