It’s been a trying week for everyone. So I was heartened to hear our fish are feeling perky about Brexit. How reassuring to know things are working out for one section of the community.
We know this because the leader of the House of Commons told us. Jacob Rees-Mogg stood up in the House and said: “The key is we’ve got our fish back. They’re now British fish and they are better and happier fish for it.”
Actually spoke those clearly deranged words out loud, while smirking at his own marvellousness. Then sat down triumphantly, having just kippered his opponents with the brilliance of his argument.
If that’s real life, no wonder satire is flapping about and gasping for air on the quayside.
Still, we can rest easy in the knowledge that Rees-Mogg will have done his research rather than having just fired off this bit of political stand-up. He’ll have been out there with snorkel and notebook, interviewing the fish and handing out union jack waistcoats by way of congratulation.
His little joke is perhaps spoilt by the fact that fish are famous for their swimming. This form of watery propulsion conveys them from one place to another, without even the need for a silly blue passport.
And I don’t wish to go all existential on you, but do you think a fish knows it’s a British fish at all? Perhaps it’s one of those mysteries, akin to whether Jacob Rees-Mog actually realises he’s a supercilious posh boy millionaire who would be better keeping his mouth in the shut position on almost all occasions.
And does the Britishness of fish apply also to birds? Much better to know that the herring gull that just shat on your head was a happy British gull and not some Frenchie interloper.
Although if any passing gulls, British or otherwise, happen to be heading to Somerset, here’s a helpful suggestion: the top of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s skull would make a splendid target.
The trouble with trying to be amusing about Jacob Rees-Mogg is that deep down, or even shallow up, there is nothing funny about him at all. What sort of a country wants a nasty right-wing millionaire crackpot representing us? But silly me. He doesn’t represent us: he represents himself and the interests of those like him.
Or so a passing fish just told me. This patriotic plaice was swimming away from our shores at the time.
To make his claptrap about proud British fish even worse, Rees-Mogg made that remark as Scottish seafood exporters discovered the not so good side to that Brexit deal Boris Johnson boasted about. Is it possible that the prime minister signed that deal without having read the small print; or even the big print?
With their catch caught up in Brexit red-tape, they face bankruptcy with only a warehouse full of rotten seafood as compensation. And as Brexit blows a hole in their livelihoods, all Rees-Mogg can do is make silly jokes about British fish.
Some minor government minister or other, and really life’s too short to find out who it was, pointed to teething troubles. As the dentist said while leaning over you in order to extract your last remaining molar.