Citizen Cuddis gets to the nub of those Brexit talks.
As Peter O’Sullevan often said, ‘They’re off!’ Brexit negotiations started last week and the stakes couldn’t be higher. The incandescently smug David ‘Dee-Dee’ Davis, Secretary of State with responsibility for making a sow’s ear out of a silk purse, has for some time been working himself so far up his own arse that it’s possible he will completely vanish from view before negotiations end — or even earlier, should his strutting smuggery continue to ramp up exponentially.
The self-deluded tripe that characterised early Tory pronouncements on the chances of landing the grandaddy of Brexit super-deals for England-shire and his wife always sounded like wishful thinking: Guaranteed to get a good deal … Who else will the sausage heads sell their BMWs to? … I doubt the Italians could offload their washing machines anywhere else … Johnny Furriner needs us more than we need him’. And so on. Let’s face it — Charles Manson had a firmer grip on reality than May and Co.
But the moment Davis actually went toe to toe with the enemy (technically 27 enemies) and he could see the whites of their eyes, he found himself staring into the vertiginous reality of the Brexit abyss, without the aid of a safety net or the Daily Mail.
As a result, the tripe now spoken by Davis on behalf of the whole of the United Kingdom is no longer self-deluding, because the game is up. Now Lord Cocky of Smugton (to use Davis’ proper title) himself knows it’s tripe. We know it’s tripe. And so does the whole of Europe.
With the government no longer able to deny reality, a previously repressed scenario loomed out of the year-long smog of Tory Brexit groupthink: that Britannia may well end up getting huckled from the negotiating table straight out the fire doors and into the alley. If she does end up sprawling there on her ass amongst the trash cans, with the prongs of her trident bent further out of shape than a soup-kitchen fork and wearing her shield for a hat, she’ll always have the opening bout of the fight of the century to look back on …
The MC announces the boxers. ‘In the red corner, representing the might of the 27, weighing 17 stone twelve and a quarter pounds, and with a Clydesdale horseshoe in both gloves, Michel! ’Battleship!’ Baaarnier! Thunderous applause shakes the auditorium.
In the blue corner, representing the fag end of the British Empire, weighing 6 Stone 4 ounces in a wet singlet, Dee-Dee! ‘Feet of Clay!’ Daaaaaavis!’ Thunderous silence.
At the call of ‘seconds away, round one’, the bell clangs. Smirking as best he can wearing a gum shield, Dee-Dee moon-walks backwards out of his corner, and starts Ali-shuffling around the canvas on his spindly, off-white, Ingerlandic legs, shouting, ‘Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.’ There are whoops of delight — all coming from Dee-Dee himself.
At this exact moment he is all things to all men: He’s a Tory sycophant; a man with the gravitas of Rod Hull’s Emu and the physique of Charlie Drake; a boxer leading with his jaw; and a politician more raging fool than raging bull.
His opponent, Battleship Barnier, looks as strong and stable as a medieval war-horse in full armour. He abruptly stops Dee-Dee gyrating about the canvas like an overwound clockwork mouse. This he achieves by driving a fist straight into Lord Cocky’s sternum. The force of the blow is equivalent to the Wabash Cannonball hitting a a rock face at 120 mph. He goes down like a sack of King Edwards. The bell clangs again. End of round one … and quite possibly, civilisation as we know it.
Treeza has not remained idle while Dee-Dee gets duffed up. In a pre-arranged pincer attack she offered EU citizens resident in the UK for five years or more a heartfelt and heavily conditional welcome, a year too late. Bunting and bottles of Babycham are to be supplied free of charge for these ‘special category’ furriners to fund street parties in celebration, although their partners and children may or may not be eligible to join them — possibly forever. Unfortunately, party-pooper Barnier said ‘not tonight, Josephine’ and now Treeza is left considering her options, which largely consist of backing down or caving in.
The BBC, in its capacity as propaganda arm of the Conservative and Unionist Party, did its bit to prepare the electorate for defeat by allowing Dee-Dee to haver that the EU might offer a deal which was ‘dissimilar to the current arrangement’. In other words that we might be told to ‘do one’. During the same escape of hot air, he went on to say that this meant that in future British businesses competing with European nations for trade might do so at a slight disadvantage. Their unencumbered counterparts in Paris and Berlin, having a free run over even terrain. While British entrepreneurs dragged smiddy’s anvils, attached to their testicles with tie wraps and leather thongs, over an endless stretch of undulating sand dunes.
Behind the scenes, the muttering classes are rumoured to be punting Chancellor Philip Hammond as caretaker Prime Minister before the Autumn conference. Appointing Hammers would be as effective as trying to close the attainment gap by appointing your school janny to the board of governors. Whatever happens next, Dee-Dee must go into training for round two of the Brexit bout amid a tsunami of gushing but thoroughly insincere support for Treeza uttered by those refusing to discount the possibility of their joining colleagues to malky her out of office when the time is right. Tick tock, Treeza.
