A Brexit day competition
I'm a little disappointed with Spiked.
They rightly point out that "Brexit Derangement Syndrome" has driven a lot of people do to do or say exceptionally very silly things.
They've published an extremely amusing article which points out ten of them - but only from Remainers.
When we all know that some of the other side are just as bonkers as the cases (correctly) lampooned in "The Ten maddest Remainer moments."
So here is a challenge to Remainers - and anyone else.
Who can produce the funniest corresponding list of "Ten maddest Brexiteer" moments" to balance it?
But here is the catch: they all have to be genuinely funny and loopy, not just an attack on something that you happen to disagree with or which annoys you even if I think you are right.
So for example, citing the slogan on the side of that red bus , though I agree with you that it was misleading and said so at the time, will not be accepted.
To start the ball rolling, an example of the kind of Mad Leaver moment which I am looking for a came this week when James Delingpole on Twitter attacked Boris Johnson's decision - yes, Boris Johnson's decision - to restrict the share Huawei can take in the UK's 5G telecoms market as proof that the "Remainiac Deep State" is still calling all the shots.
The author of the funniest list submitted by the end of February gets 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 my blog.
They rightly point out that "Brexit Derangement Syndrome" has driven a lot of people do to do or say exceptionally very silly things.
They've published an extremely amusing article which points out ten of them - but only from Remainers.
When we all know that some of the other side are just as bonkers as the cases (correctly) lampooned in "The Ten maddest Remainer moments."
So here is a challenge to Remainers - and anyone else.
Who can produce the funniest corresponding list of "Ten maddest Brexiteer" moments" to balance it?
But here is the catch: they all have to be genuinely funny and loopy, not just an attack on something that you happen to disagree with or which annoys you even if I think you are right.
So for example, citing the slogan on the side of that red bus , though I agree with you that it was misleading and said so at the time, will not be accepted.
To start the ball rolling, an example of the kind of Mad Leaver moment which I am looking for a came this week when James Delingpole on Twitter attacked Boris Johnson's decision - yes, Boris Johnson's decision - to restrict the share Huawei can take in the UK's 5G telecoms market as proof that the "Remainiac Deep State" is still calling all the shots.
The author of the funniest list submitted by the end of February gets 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 my blog.
Comments
So when I stumbled on this challenge I thought “Great! This’ll be easy.”
And then, of course, it wasn’t.
Not because there’s any shortage of bonkers Brexiter moments – there isn’t. But because so many of those loopy moments are also genuinely scary. Many form key parts of the argument upon which the referendum was won. They demonstrate the madness that lies at the heart of this dreadful experiment. And it’s very hard to find something so desperate, so serious, in any way funny.
But I’ve tried – I’ve really tried. Mainly I’ve chosen quotes relating to the impending trade deal negotiations. It doesn’t take any sort of genius to understand that these were only ever going to be massively complex. So if these quotes don’t make you chuckle at their preposterousness, you’ve not been concentrating.
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. (This quote STILL stops me in my tracks.)
7. “The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want” – Michael Gove MP
Next, just 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.”
5. “If Brexit is a disaster, I will go and live abroad.”
How about this admission from Dominic Raab? Just astounding:
4. “I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this but… we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing.” (Raab was Brexit secretary when he said this – Brexit secretary!)
Back to those negotiations.
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, at the time the 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. (This should be in the top slot for sheer ludicrousness, but it is trumped by the biggest joke of all).
1. “Brexit means Brexit”.
Theresa May’s meaningless tautological body-swerve has fallen out of usage these days. Employ it and you’ll be roundly mocked - and rightly so, because we all now know there is a huge range of potential Brexit settlements out there, all of which “mean Brexit” to someone or other. At the time she coined it, May knew that, while Brexit remained undefined, her shaky ship of state might not founder.
What seems remarkable now is how long she got away with it.
(I would have included “Get Brexit Done” in this list, but Chris still clings to this as having actually been achieved, so he would have to take issue with me over it. Brexit will actually be “done” when a new relationship with the EU is established, and not before).
So, have I fulfilled the brief? Is this a funny list of mad Brexit moments? As I said to start with, it’s hard to laugh about something so serious. And most of these quotes are now genuinely historic – they have a place in the extensive catalogue of Brexit soundbites that will outlive their authors. So in a way they have become in our minds almost normalised, through repetition and desensitisation.
But ask yourself this, when you first heard them, even if they didn’t make you laugh out loud, did they not make you gasp and stretch your eyes?
They certainly did for me.
- since this promise helped win and an election and has been delivered -
but I think the rest of your ten entries count and they include some pretty funny ones.
So unless someone else steps up to the plate within the next few days, you win the competition Paul.
(Delingpole implicitly arguing that Donald Trump is a "Remainiac")
was the maddest of the lot.
Cumbrian Nerd
10) The UKIP "Chicken" video
9) UKIP leader Nigel Farage disowns the 2010 UKIP manifesto - to which he had written the foreword - on live TV as "drivel" and "nonsense" in 2014 and claims never to have read the 486 pages of policies published with it.
8) Mr Blobby appears on TV and 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 there is no difference. (He was in fact completely correct about this but IMHO it still counts as a mad Brexiteer moment.)
7) Nigel Farage MEP claimed 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 blamed the EU for the lack of clarify of the new Handball rule.
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 a mad remainer meme)
2) The horrendous "Britain's coming home" UKIP song (still sadly available on youtube)
AND FINALLY
1) Brexit party candidate David Selkus, who stood for the party in Epping Forest, suggested on twitter in 2019 that Remain supporters should be locked up in the Tower of London as traitors.
(Don't think the Tower could hold 16 million people, Dave!)
I think they must have shortened the period after which all comments on a post go into that queue (if not the Spam file.)
I will have a look at them both tomorrow and decide whether "Cumbrian Nerd" (who also emailed me his entry) or Paul Holdsworth gets first prize: there will be a second prize for the other.