Taking back control means begging the EU to let us stay – just so we can leave

David Davis still says the EU would back down to our demands. They’ve waited so long to the last minute, that the last minute finished – but if we hold our nerve and wait until the 85th last minute, they’ll definitely back down

Mark Steel
Thursday 11 April 2019 13:47 BST
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'We must press on at pace' Theresa May says parties must work together to overcome 'unique situation' of Brexit deadlock

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What a magnificently imaginative humiliation. The country has never looked as gloriously out of control since the day we told everyone to piss off because we were “taking back control”.

We’re the tubby wheezy bloke in the pub who calls everyone a twat, then keeps getting punched and yells, “Come on then, I’ll take you ALL on you slags,” as blood spurts from his ears and nose. And after all that, the landlord offers to let him stay as long as he clears up the mess with a mop.

The Brexit extension until October is marvellous, as it means we can enjoy the sight of Mark Francois getting redder and redder by the day for another six months. By July, he’ll be giving off so much heat we’ll be able to plug him into the National Grid and solve the country’s energy crisis, while meeting our tough carbon emission targets too. During periods of high electricity demand, someone can whisper to him that we’ve agreed to a customs union. He’ll boil away like Sizewell B and we can all enjoy free underfloor heating like they have in Iceland.

Several EU leaders said before the summit that Theresa May’s performance would be critical. But it’s unlikely they meant her performance in answering their questions, as they knew what she was going to say. In the part before they threw her outside, they probably entertained themselves by getting her to ride an angry ostrich round the room and sing “Angels” by Robbie Williams while being squirted with bird mess from a hose, like a contestant on a Japanese game show, rewarding her with an extra week inside the EU for every line she got right. Sadly she forgot “she offers me protection”, otherwise we’d be able to stay in the bloc until November.

The prime minister’s new catchphrase is “smooth and orderly”, to replace “strong and stable”, which is a fascinating illustration of how language has different meanings to each of us, in the way that “sick” became positive over the last 10 years. Maybe she’s in touch with youth dialect: in North London, adolescents see a mass brawl with 40 arrests and someone exploding a gasometer, and say “dis hood is smooth and orderly bruv, you get me”.

A major part of this new Brexit extension is the requirement for the UK to attend a special conference in June, so Europe’s leaders can decide if we’ve been naughty or not. This is the result of “getting our country back”. The British cabinet will have to sit before the prime minister of Luxembourg, as he says: “It’s always the same people isn’t it? All the other countries want to get on with their work but SOME of us just want to cause trouble. That means YOU, Britain. SIT UP STRAIGHT.”

After a couple more years of taking back control, we’ll have to put up our hand and ask Malta when we want to go to the toilet. And every time we get up to get a glass of water, Cyprus will shout: “WHERE do you think YOU’RE going? STAY in your seats. The post-summit press conference is a signal for ME – it is NOT a signal for YOU.”

But the extension until 31 October has taken the Brexit problem forward in a healthy positive way, because now we can be sure that on 29 October our government will say, “Oh Jesus, we’ve only got two days! It went clean out of our mind,” and beg for an extension until the following August.

The professional Brexit people insist this is happening because we’ve not been Brexity enough, like someone advising a gambling addict that the reason they’ve got poorer is because they stopped putting bets on once they’d already lost their house.

David Davis still says the EU would back down to our demands, as they always wait until the last minute. This time they’ve waited so much to the last minute, that the last minute finished. So they set another last minute, and now that last minute’s finished. But if we hold our nerve and wait until the 85th last minute, they’ll back down. Of course they will, just in time for the last surviving tribes of Britain who learned to live off raw wasps to enjoy the benefits of setting up our own trade deal with Ecuador.

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The most robust Leave campaigners promised something they can’t deliver and now they’re blaming everyone else for not delivering it. They should start a new project and demand we leave the solar system that’s been holding us back for too long. When it proves more tricky than politicians first imagined, the prime minister can blame astronomers and scientists for not supporting a withdrawal agreement, and then Brian Cox will explain that “moving to a different part of the universe could be very awkward, as it defies the laws of motion” and demand a second referendum, so lots of angry people with pulsating purple veins will call phone-in shows and growl “Cox is a traitor. They should just get on with it. I’m sick of Saturn and I’m sick of Venus.”

By then we’ll be very used to this Alice in Wonderland world, in which we demand to stay in something to leave it, and in which elitist people yell that they’re sick of the elite. We’ll be so numb at the idea that we can’t take any more of this freedom of movement that the announcement that we’ve been sent to that black hole they’ve found will appear fourth on the news after Darcey Bussell rejoining the judges on Strictly Come Dancing.

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