Results of my Brexit Day competition

I ran a competition on Brexit Day (31st January) to balance an article from Spiked.

The published an amusing article called "The Ten maddest Remainer moments."

They pointed out that in what they called "Brexit Derangement Syndrome" a lot of people have suffered a loss of judgement brought on by the strength of their opinions over whether Britain should leave the EU and been driven to do or say very silly things.

The thing is, anyone who has retained a sense of proportion knows that this applies to some of the  hardliners on both the Leave and Remain sides, yet the Spiked article just called out Remainers.

So I issued a challenge:

Who could produce the funniest corresponding list of "Ten maddest Brexiteer" moments" to balance it?

I gave as an example that, whatever you think of the Huawei decision, it was a "Mad Brexiteer moment" when James Delingpole on Twitter attacked Boris Johnson's decision - yes, Boris Johnson's decision - on the subject as proof that the "Remainiac Deep State" is still calling all the shots.

(I was just re-reading Delingpole's utterly bonkers tweet and can't work out whether he was criticising the "Remainiac Deep State" for the fact that Huawei is being allowed to take part in the UK's new 5G network at all, or for the fact that the government has severely restricted the share they can take.)

Anyway, I promised that the author of the funniest list submitted by the end of February would get to choose as a prize either a £10 Amazon voucher or the opportunity to submit a guest article arguing anything you like which is not libellous or otherwise against the law to be published on this blog.

I had two entries, submitted respectively a week and fifteen minutes before the deadline!

Both gave me quite a few chuckles.

I have checked out all twenty examples given in these two entries and was able to find confirmation on the internet that all twenty referred to real events or quotes. Where appropriate I have included links below.

One entry came from Paul Holdsworth, and consisted of the following ten quotes:


10. “Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation” – John Redwood MP

9. “All the problems that you traditionally have with a trade negotiation aren’t there” – Matthew Elliott, chief exec, Vote Leave

8. “I think we could very easily get a better trade deal than we have at the moment” – Douglas Carswell, ex UKIP MP.

7. “The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want” – Michael Gove MP

A couple from former MEP and member of the EU Fisheries Committee (non-attending), Nigel Farage.

6. “I never promised it would be a huge success, I never said it would be a failure, I just said we’d be in control.”  and

5. “If Brexit is a disaster, I will go and live abroad.”

4. “I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this but… we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing.” - Dominic Raab, while Brexit secretary.

3. “The free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history” – Liam Fox MP, while international trade secretary.

2. “A trade deal with the EU could be sorted out in an afternoon over a cup of coffee” – Gerard Batten, ex-UKIP leader.

1. “Brexit means Brexit” - Theresa May.


The other entry came from a person who uses the pen-name "Cumbrian Nerd" and contained the following ten quotes or events:

10) The UKIP "Chicken" video

9) UKIP leader Nigel Farage disowns the 2010 UKIP manifesto - of which he had signed the foreword - on live TV in 2014, "calling it "drivel" and "nonsense," and claims never to have read the 486 pages of policies published with it.

8) Mr Blobby assures the "Loose Women" that the UK treasury will not lose the revenue collected from the Common External Tariff in the event of a hard Brexit because this money is all remitted to the EU anyway so it makes no difference.

(Cumbrian Nerd wrote "He was in fact completely correct about this but IMHO it still counts as a mad Brexiteer moment.")

7) Nigel Farage MEP claims that Britain would not be bullied by the "Unelected old men who run the EU."

He didn't appear to appreciate the irony of this statement being made by a man aged over fifty who has failed seven times to be elected to the House of Commons but did manage to become an MEP.

6) Football manager Ian Holloway appeared to blame the EU for the lack of clarity of the new Handball rule. (At least, his comments were widely interpreted in this way, although he later issued a "clarification" in which he denied that was what he meant.)

5) Mark Francois MP said on TV in September 2019 that "If we don't leave on 31st October this country will explode."

(It wasn't until four months after that date that the UK finally left the EU. It didn't explode in the meantime.)

4) UKIP produced a "Nigel Farage Condom (for when you have a hard Brexit)"

3) Dan Hannan MEP posed with a grumpy cat who supposedly "wasn't impressed" by "Cats against Brexit."

(admittedly this was a response to an equally mad Remainer meme)

2) The horrendous "Britain's coming home" song (still sadly available on Youtube)

AND FINALLY

1) Brexit party candidate Darren Selkus, who stood for the party in Epping Forest, posted a video on social media entitled "What do you do with traitors?" in which he recommended taking one's children to the Tower of London to show them "how the UK used to deal with traitors who are committing treason" in which category he appeared to include pro-Remain MPs.


Thanks to both Paul and "Cumbrian Nerd" for these entries.

After some consideration I have decided that "Cumbrian Nerd" has edged it and have contacted him to offer his choice of the agreed prizes.