The British Government has precisely zero chance of getting a Brexit deal. That much ought to be clear by now even to someone who has spent the past couple of years living in the deepest depths of a cave on a remote island somewhere off the coast of Antarctica. And indeed that would be preferable to having to live with the daily onslaught on our senses of the likes of Mark Francois, Jacob Rees Mogg, and the abandoned mattress fire who enjoys the title of Prime Minister. Sorry, that’s disrespectful to our expensively educated classical scholar PM. His correct title is of course incendium culcitae relictae, that’s Latin for abandoned mattress fire.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, when he’s not fending off allegations about his dealings with an American pole dancer, is going around this week insisting that his proposed deal is very fair and represents a major compromise on the part of the UK. It’s as clear as the fact that he has precisely zero chances of getting a deal that this is part of a strategy to put the blame for no deal on the EU. It’s also very clear that this has been his intention all along. This Government, despite its protestations to the contrary, has put very little serious effort into getting a deal, because they know that the only deal that would be acceptable to the EU is the kind of deal that wouldn’t be acceptable to the Brextremists who put the mattress fire in office.
Now that he’s been frustrated in his desire for a General Election right away, the plan of this incendium culcitae relictae is to ensure that there’s a no deal crash out from the EU, to blame the EU and remainer MPs for it, and then to have a general election before the stercore ventilatorem percutit. Which is Latin for the shit hits the fan. Because casually dropping bits of Latin into your discourse isn’t as clever clever as Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson would like us to think it is. I can do it, and I went to a comprehensive in North Lanarkshire. It’s just that due to centuries of intellectual snobbery and the fact that historically only the rich could afford to teach their kids Latin it makes you appear cleverer than say, casually dropping in catch phrases from RuPaul’s Drag Race. Halleloo Miss Vaaaaanjie. Even though it’s on much the same level.
Anyway, I digress. Today, Monday, the mattress fire is complaining that the EU hasn’t properly explained its objections to his plan. Or rather, his ruse. That’s a bit like a kid complaining that the teacher hasn’t properly explained why they were given a failing mark when in answer to the question “Name six animals which you can find in the Arctic?” the pupil wrote “Five polar bears and an elephant that’s on holiday.”
The Mattress Fire’s ruse is unacceptable to the EU because it creates a customs border within the island of Ireland. It is unacceptable because it gives a veto to the DUP, leaving the whole of Ireland held hostage to the only political party on the island that wants Brexit – a party, moreoever, which opposed the Good Friday Agreement. It’s unacceptable because it doesn’t include any legal guarantees. It’s unacceptable because it only provides for partial regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland. It’s unacceptable because it’s as far removed from the backstop as reality is from the furthest edges of Johnson’s ego. It’s unacceptable because it breaks the agreement made by the UK Government in December 2017 that Northern Ireland would remain within the customs union and there would be no hard border within the island of Ireland. It’s unacceptable because the technology upon which the British Government’s plan relies doesn’t actually exist in this universe. But apart from that, it’s just fine, and the EU has every confidence that the elephant that’s currently on holiday in the Arctic will be back soon to help facilitate the smooth passage of goods between Newry and Dundalk.
The UK Government’s proposal for getting the EU to agree to its ruse, sorry its detailed and carefully thought out plan, is to draw up a list of all the ways in which Ireland will be damaged by a no-deal Brexit. It’s the threaten your neighbours with your own self-harm school of negotiation. Like telling the people next door that they need to agree to you blocking their garden path because otherwise they’ll find their house and garden covered in soot after you’ve set fire to your house.
The House of Commons is distinctly underwhelmed by the deal so far. MPs in the Commons have been complaining that they have not been allowed to see the Government’s details 44 page legal text. Which means that they are just supposed to take Lyin’ Bastert Johnson’s word for what it contains. This totally fills them with confidence in the same way that you would be happy to put your life in the hands of a bungee jump organiser who has a history of putting photos on Twitter of splattered corpses. Labour’s Keith Starmer pointed out that there was a contradiction between what the Mattress Fire told the Commons last week about there being no need for any new border infrastructure in Northern Ireland and what the Irish Taoiseach says the plan entails. What is the government trying to hide? The minor spokesscapegoat who had been put up by the Government bleated a few words of nothingness in response, and claimed that the Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay was travelling around Europe “whipping up support and enthusiasm” for the ruse. Sorry, the deal.
Meanwhile in Edinburgh, the Mattress Fire won a pyrrhic victory in the court case brought against him by the SNP’s Joanna Cherry, the anti-Brexit businessman Dale Vince, and the legal campaigner Jolyon Maugham. The Court of Session declined to grant the plaintiffs their request for an order of nobile officium, by which the Court would step in an appoint a person to write to the EU to request an extension should the Mattress Fire refuse to obey the law obliging him to do so. However the interesting part was in the court’s reasoning. The judges have clearly interpreted the Mattress Fire’s protestations to the Court that he’s going to obey the law and would not frustrate its purpose as a legally binding commitment. There is no need for an injunctive order, but only because the Court holds that the Government is legally obliged to keep its word to the Court and ask the EU for an extension by the 17th of October at the latest. If the Government doesn’t comply, and tries to evade the law or acts in a way designed to frustrate the law’s purpose, the Mattress Fire will be in contempt of court.
According to reports in the news today, the talk in Brussels is no longer about the UK Government’s deal that’s not really a deal. It’s all about the extension and how long it’s going to be. It now looks extremely likely that we’ll be going into a General Election next month without the Mattress Fire having achieved his sworn promise of taking the UK out of the EU by 31 October or die in a ditch. That means that he’ll have Nigel Farage breathing down his neck, taking votes away from the Tories in leave voting areas.
But then all this will probably change tomorrow. The mattress fire has a lot of combustible material left in it.
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