Only way Brexit can end well is to put Jacob Rees-Mogg and Alastair Campbell in a ring to fight it out
I want to see those two sorting it out like men in the boxing ring — the winner gets their way and the loser shuts up for ever
LAST weekend, all of the Government ministers sat round a table determined to work out the best plan for leaving Europe.
This was pretty tricky as some didn’t want to leave at all, some thought we should leave a little bit, and some thought we should stand on the White Cliffs of Dover, flicking Vs, like Ray Gardner from the blackcurrant Tango ad.
To make matters worse, the plan they came up with would then have to go in front of all 27 European nations and 20 would have to say: “Yes. This is all fine by us.”
So, the deal, whatever it was, would have to satisfy the needs of Boris Johnson, Ken Clarke, Zorba, the Greek walnut farmer who hasn’t paid any tax since 1963, and Wolfgang, the thrusting German executive who drives a BMW M5 and has offices in Slough.
Then you’ve got Pierre the French sheep farmer, Luigi the Venetian chef, Pablo, the bullfighter, Zieter the Danish hedge fund boy and on and on and on.
This, in itself, is such a daunting problem that many believe it will never happen and that we will have to pull out with no deal. Or not pull out at all. Or stick our fingers in our ears and go LALALALALA until the end of time.
If you had the negotiating skills of Henry Kissinger, the brain of a Cray supercomputer, and the patience of geology, it might be possible.
But instead, what we have is Mrs May, who decides on walking holidays to call an election because she couldn’t lose. And then she did.
Despite this, she did get all of her ministers to sign up to a single plan but when she asked them to agree in public, two — with a shoulder-sagging inevitability — immediately resigned.
Of course, a compromise can always be reached. Northern Ireland was eventually settled but only after a prolonged war. And that’s what worries me about Brexit. Everyone has dug their heels in and no one’s budging.
It can’t end well, if it ever ends at all.
Some of me wants to see Jacob Rees-Mogg and Alastair Campbell sorting it out like men in the boxing ring. Or maybe we decide on what to do next, using football.
Brexiteers pick a team from their supporters. Remainers and soft Brexit enthusiasts do likewise.
We’d have Bob Geldof on the wing, desperately trying to dart past Boris Johnson, and get a shot over the head of Roger Daltrey. While Theresa May runs about in black shorts with a whistle and a can of white foam.
The winner gets their way. And the loser agrees to shut up for ever.
Heroic failure a given
MANY people seem to think that England’s decision to play badly in the second half of the World Cup semi-final was weird.
Not so. Because if you want to be remembered in this country, you have got to fail.
Think about it.
All our most famous endeavours: The Charge of the Light Brigade, Dunkirk, Arnhem, Scott of the Antarctic... what do they all have in common?
Failure.
Trust me on this. In a thousand years, they’ll be running charity bike rides to the birthplace of Harry Kane.
And if you bring up Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst, no one will know what you’re on about.
It's British air-wanes
I STOOD in London on Tuesday marvelling at the waves of planes flying overhead as the RAF celebrated its hundredth birthday.
But I couldn’t keep at bay a gnawing doubt that what I was seeing in this aerial armada was pretty much everything our air force can get into the skies these days.
So I did some checking and the news is glum.
Today, we have 192 front line fighter aircraft.
We lost nearly six times that number in the Battle of Britain alone.
The second-best Dear Deidre-style tale ever
THIS week, I read a (possibly fictitious) story about a sterile man who asked his neighbour to get his wife pregnant.
Apparently, the extremely good-looking neighbour had 72 attempts before it turned out that he was sterile too.
When the husband learned this, he wondered out loud to his wife how he’d managed to produce two kids, and she was forced to admit, er, they weren’t his.
It has to be the second-best Dear Deidre-style tale ever.
After that man who returned home from a double shift at work to find his bride-to-be in bed with . . . his mother.
Hard to figure out Nissan
ANOTHER day, and another car firm has come forward to say its fuel emission figures are wrong.
First we had VW, but since then Daimler, Suzuki, Mitsubishi and General Motors have been busted. Now comes Nissan, which put its hands up and did some public hari-kiri.
Only this time, things are a bit different. Because Nissan says that although its testing procedures were wonky and results were falsified, all of the cars it makes, with the possible exception of the GTR, still meet standards laid down by the law.
Which is like going into a police station and admitting to the fact that you’d been driving faster than you’d planned on the motorway. And that at one point you’d reached 67mph.
The Japanese. You’ve got to love ’em.
A bit of a sore Lew-ser
LAST weekend, the intrepid Formula One reporting team completely failed to pick up on the fact that both Lewis Hamilton and his boss at Mercedes accused Ferrari of some blatant Boss Hoggery.
So allow me...
The claim is that Ferrari chiefs said to Kimi Raikkonen before the race began: “Look mate, at this corner, get on the inside of Lewis then clip his back wheel in such a way that he spins into last place, and you damage neither your suspension nor any of the flimsy knick-knacks on the end of your front wing”.
That, and I’ve talked to F1 drivers about this, is simply not something that could be achieved on purpose.
'Deprived of a member of his body'
WE were told this week that the actor Joseph Capone was “deprived of a member of his body” by kidnappers.
“Deprived of a member of his body”?
Are we living in a church in 1635?
Or do they mean that the kidnappers cut off the poor man’s penis?
Cop rap is plane stupid
A MAN called Jonathan Rhys Meyers had a couple of drinks while on a flight to Los Angeles this week. And then decided to have an argument with his wife, who for some reason is called Mara Lane. After this, he popped into the lavatory for a crafty toke on his harmless vape.
Because he’s quite a well-known actor who’s won a Golden Globe, it should have been fairly obvious to cabin staff that he wasn’t going to storm the cockpit and explode.
And let’s be honest, a bickering couple is hardly going to cause one of the plane’s engines to fall off.
Annoying for other passengers? Yes. Bad manners? Definitely. But a threat to the safety of other passengers? Nah.
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Even so, the plane was met by six cop cars full of armed police officers, who carted the man off to the cells.
It’s getting ridiculous.
In America now, farting on a plane is considered to be a worse crime than wandering around a school, hosing down the teachers with machine gun fire.