Remainers have brought us just what the country needs: a brand new Brexit bus with a misleading number down the side

The Remain campaign has its own big red bulls**t bus, just a couple of years too late

Among the many decisive issues that might have swung the Brexit referendum, the relentless brilliance of the Leave campaign – in contrast to a Remain campaign of which most of the country was unaware – is widely considered the most significant.

So it was good to see that narrative challenged this morning when, approximately two years too late, a big red pro-Remain bus with a wildly misleading number painted down the side of it swung suddenly past Big Ben and drove several laps around Parliament Square.

It is the latest stunt from what is effectively the continuity Remain campaign. Chuka Umunna was there, Gina Miller, Lord Adonis and so on.

“Brexit to cost £2,000 million a week,” it claims, in giant, post-traumatic-stress-inducing letters in all too familiar font. “According to the Government’s own report. Is it worth it?”

That number, by the way, as sensationally leaked a number of weeks ago, is the end point of economic forecasts projected 15 years into the future, after 15 years’ worth of estimated reductions in growth have all been compounded together.

Which is not to say they’re not accurate, nor should we dwell too long on the fact that, had similar projections been published 15 years ago for the present day, they would not take into account such innovations as the iPhone, all its apps, Facebook, WiFi and well, you get the gist.

But, you know, when set against the thing you’re supposedly satirising, which, like it or loathe it, was the gross amount the UK could give to the EU each week, and would, if it wishes, be free to give to the NHS after we leave, then it is hard to avoid remembering which side won the referendum and which side didn’t and, possibly, why.

As red bus stunts go, it is not also entirely unreasonable to question the wisdom of launching a bid red bus on Parliament Square, which also doubles as one of London’s busiest roundabouts and is highly likely to be the singular bit of road in all the land and world with the very highest population density of red buses anywhere.

As I pursued it, Benny Hill-style, in laps around the inside pavement, while this new big red Brexit bus drove in wider concentric circles around me, on more than one occasion I found my target had become confused with either a hop-on, hop-off sightseeing tour or the 159 to Streatham.

By the time it came to a stop at Little College Street, unloading its Remainer cargo for rounds of TV interviews, Ukip’s Scottish leader David Coburn appeared mysteriously from nowhere to waddle around the bus’s exterior perimeter barking, “Brexit now! Nigel Farage for Prime Minister! Brexit now! Nigel Farage for Prime Minister!”

It is alas necessary at this juncture to point out that in order for that to happen, not only would one of Nigel Farage’s thus far seven attempts at being elected to Parliament would have to have been a success, but Ukip would require a further 300-ish candidates to also be elected to win parliamentary elections.

This is a number so large it can by no means be certain to exclude the man who accused a gay donkey of raping his horse, the woman from South Thanet who refuses to be in the same room as anyone with “negroid features” (a problem in the House of Commons – just about). And it would also presumably compel Henry Bolton’s girlfriend to swear an oath of allegiance to an elderly lady whose future granddaughter-in-law she has racially abused on Facebook Messenger. Awks.

Chuka Umunna did at least diligently explain to this humble reporter, regarding Remain’s own spurious number, that it is “a Government figure” not “a deliberately false spending commitment” and the campaign seeks merely to highlight the “mistruths” that were told.

These mistruth-highlightings are coming soon to a roundabout near you, by the way. The big red Remain bus is off on nationwide tour. There is no firm agreement among those who metaphorically or literally drive it about precisely what it seeks to achieve, short of giving the country another say on Brexit. So if the prospect of a second referendum fills you with fear and dread, you may have to look away – if not now, then soon.