TO say something original about Brexit becomes harder by the day. Is there anything left? Are all insults spat out? Have the worms yet nibbled the last flesh off the bones?
On Sunday, when Boris Johnson likened himself to the Incredible Hulk, a ludicrous comparison graffitied all over the front of the Mail on Sunday, we reached a new low.
Over in Twitter-land, I pointed out that Incredible Sulk was more like it, only soon to find other great minds and seldom differing fools making the same observation.
The people’s prime minister, another label Johnson has stuck on his own frowning forehead, went to Luxembourg yesterday for a meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker – a showdown described in advance by the Sun as “the Hulk versus Le Sulk”.
When an outdoor press conference with Luxembourg’s PM, Xavier Bettel, was disrupted by a small but noisy anti-Brexit protest, the Sun’s line was flipped on its head: our hulk turned sulk, refusing to take part.
This left Bettel standing alongside an empty podium; well, at least that provided us with a new metaphor for Boris Johnson, the empty podium on legs.
In the nothing new to say world of Brexit, Bettel’s behaviour receives different reviews in today’s newspapers. The Boris Bugle (more formally known as the Daily Telegraph) has a photograph of Bettel gesturing towards the empty podium beneath the headline: “Luxembourg laughs in Johnson’s face.”
Only they weren’t laughing in his face as his face wasn’t there. You can’t laugh in the face of a man who’s scurried off and refuses to appear. Your laughter instead is directed at the vacuum left by his scuttled-off arse. That’s what Luxembourg’s prime minister did; and who can blame him?
“No wonder Britain voted to quit the EU,” the Daily Express mutters into its morning tea, making a ripple in the tepid, milky brew.
The Financial Times picks up on a social media theme. Some of us in the department of great minds and seldom differing fools had already noted that Johnson had gone from the Incredible Hulk to the Invisible Man. The FT reflects that in its headline: “Invisible Man: Johnson avoids demonstrators.”
He’s always avoiding things (Parliament, mostly) – apart from here in the north, where he persists in visiting Yorkshire, usually to be rebuffed in suitably blunt fashion.
I am sure some people in Yorkshire must like Boris Johnson (please form a queue in the nearest phone box, if you can find one). But his brand of posh stand-up politics isn’t really a good fit round here: he flaps around like a fish out of water while making piffle-waffle sounds with his open mouth.
The next stage in a show that threatens to run longer than the Mousetrap began today with the Supreme Court deliberating whether it was illegal for Boris Johnson to suspend parliament; a ruling is expected later in the week.
A last thought on yesterday’s non-appearance by Boris Johnson goes to the veteran BBC reporter John Simpson, who’s been around long enough to make telling comparisons.
Simpson tweeted: “I once watched Margaret Thatcher land in Zambia, charge down the aircraft steps in the dark into the middle of a hostile crowd & give an impromptu presser even though she’d been told people might throw acid at her.”
While I admired Thatcher not one tiny bit, on that occasion she appears to have had more balls than Johnson.
Incredible Hulk? More like the Honey Monster’s posh cousin…