How’s the Brexit shitstorm going for you… part, oh God, lost count; this feculent tempest has been blowing for so long, and God again, I just saw the front page of the Sun and felt another marble roll away.
They’ve only gone and mocked up Theresa May as Citizen Smith, fist in the air next to the headline “Power To The People”. This is their bonkers take on the prime minister’s statement last night when she blamed Parliament, MPs, the way the wind was blowing, Jacob Rees-Mogg not climbing back into his tomb in time at night – oh frankly just about anyone and anything but herself.
Never mind that 1970s sit-com hero Citizen Smith, who by the way is surely closer in spirit to Jeremy Corbyn, Mrs Maybe’s latest bizarre speech was more Bart Simpson than anything else: “I didn’t do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can’t prove anything.”
Except that we can. We can point a finger at the flip-flopping prime minister for triggering article 50 before her government had given a thought to strategy or what might happen. Then nothing much happened for months as senior Tories set about scrapping rather than talking to the EU.
Boxing herself in by drawing pointless red lines all over the place didn’t help. Then she called an unnecessary election which she almost lost, clinging to power thanks to an unsavoury deal with the DUP devil (cost £1bn and probably mounting) – and, post electoral bruising, carried on as if she’d won a massive majority, rather than a pipsqueak one.
Anything else? Oh, she spurned any cross-party consensus – or any consensus at all – in favour of robotically muttering “It’s my way or the high way”, only to find herself locked in a Downing Street cupboard with the DUP and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Brexit ultras. And you wouldn’t like the smell in that cupboard after they’ve been arguing in there.
After that, yes, Parliament hasn’t helped her – but this is a Conservative mess, created and caused by her party, and her predecessor, and one she has made worse. And besides why should MPs help Theresa May? All she has done is stolidly stick to the same message, delivered so boringly in the hope everyone will nod off and give in.
Speaker John Bercow this week decreed that Mrs Maybe couldn’t keep bringing back the same withdrawal deal unless it was noticeably different. This caught her out as that was her only tactic.
As for last night’s statement to the nation, it was grandiose, delusional and infuriating. Blaming MPs for the mess she is making of Brexit sticks in the gullet – but not as much as Theresa May pretending to be on our side. Now that really is a stretch too far.
The Financial Times quotes a senior EU diplomat as saying the Brexit impasse is “a circus that is beyond comprehension”. Yup, and Theresa May is running that circus. The clowns have already turned against her. And the tigers will be next.