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Watching Brexiteers get angry because we're not doing Brexit 'right' makes me proud to be British

Every week they’re in the audience on Question Time, screaming: ‘We voted to COME OUT, so never mind talking, we should just COME OUT, and then we should go back in so we can come out AGAIN, and keep doing it TWICE A WEEK – that’ll teach ’em to be Belgian’

Mark Steel
Thursday 22 March 2018 16:37 GMT
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Nigel Farage throws dead fish into the Thames in protest over the Brexit transition deal

One of the joys of Brexit is how it brings out the classic British tradition of thoughtful debate that makes us proud to be British in the first place. So we unpick the complex issues of trade and human rights, by stating: “The main thing is I want a passport that’s a nearly BLUE colour, not a scummy PURPLE, FOREIGN colour what was invented in Denmark or something where everything’s PURPLE, because I’m BRITISH.”

This is similar to the great debates of the 17th century, when European philosophers argued that our thoughts were the only things that proved we existed, and English philosophers such as Hobbes replied: “Yeah but my thoughts are BLUE, mate, or at least NEARLY blue, because I’m BRITISH, mate, look at that nearly blue colour, I’m welling up whether I exist or not.”

This is because “nearly blue” is the colour of BRITAIN, whereas Europe enslaved us by forcing us to have passports that are nearly red, the tyrants. And you name me ONE THING in Britain that’s traditionally red. Our flag is nearly blue, white and blue, our post boxes are nearly blue, our phone boxes are nearly blue, our flower is the nearly blue rose of England.

To show how British these nearly blue passports are, the contract for making them is being taken off a company in Britain, and given to a firm in a far more British place – which is France.

The imaginative side to this decision is if we don’t get a deal on tariffs for importing passports, all our passports will be left in a warehouse in France, and we won’t be able to go and get them because we haven’t got a passport.

Maybe the next step will be to hand the contract for making them to Facebook. Then they can put adverts on it that suit our profile, so if someone’s been to America a few times there can be an advert for semi-automatic rifles next to their photo or if you go Thailand a lot there can be a little advert for brides; we’re free to do what we want at last.

The triumph over passports is part of a pattern, in which many people seem really angry about Brexit, but the people who supported Leave and won are angrier than the people who supported Remain and lost.

So every week they’re in the audience on Question Time, screaming: “We voted to COME OUT, so never mind talking, we should just COME OUT, and then we should go back in so we can come out AGAIN, and keep doing it TWICE A WEEK – that’ll teach ’em to be Belgian.”

Then someone shouts: “It’s been nearly TWO YEARS since we voted to come out, but we’ve not built ONE WALL OF BREEZE BLOCK round the country and covered it in anti-climb paint so no one can get in, not ONE, even though that was what it said on the ballot paper; we’ve been BETRAYED.”

Simon Calder explains what will be different about your passport after Brexit

A possible spokesperson for this ideal was on a radio phone-in, hosted by James O’Brien, and he was adamant we should walk away with no agreement on anything, asserting our case by making Europeans wait for hours at passport control if they tried to come here. So the host said: “But then they’ll do the same if you want to go to France,” and the caller said: “Yes, but I don’t WANT to go to France.”

And this is surely the basis on which we should plan the country’s next century of economic direction: on where this bloke wants to go on holiday. For example, car manufacturers can announce at their AGM: “Our sales to France this year were a little disappointing, down from £35m profit in the year ending April 2017, to nothing. This was due to the new regulations in which no contact with France is permissible, following measures introduced because a bloke from Watford doesn’t want to go to France.”

So it makes sense that we should all celebrate when our passports are redesigned in a colour we choose, so we can proudly look at them, as we wonder why we need them seeing as we don’t want to go anywhere.

This is why we need historic protests such as the heroic effort staged by Nigel Farage, in which he displayed his contempt for the EU by throwing a fish in the sea.

The authorities in Brussels and Strasbourg will be worried sick about this, gasping: “Oh my God, he’s actually dared to put a fish in the sea, if he does it again the sea will be full up and there’ll be no room for all our plastic.”

There may be an irony here, in which Nigel Farage could learn from the French, because when they protest they chuck a truck load of hippos on the motorway, which it could be argued creates more of a nuisance than a fish in the sea. But I’m sure Nigel knows what he’s doing.

So we can look forward to more victories very soon. Next our English football team will no longer play in white with those lions the Europeans imposed on us, but in a strip with a magnificent nearly blue cross on it, along with a striking yellow background, and they’ll be made by a flag company in Sweden.

Then the Queen’s face on the stamps can be nearly blue, and designed by the Belgians that made the Smurfs. Bit by bit we’re getting our country back.

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