Theresa May is trying to make us so bored with Brexit that we agree to anything

No one will ever satisfy the people who scream complaints such as 'We used to have proper singers, like Engelbert Humperdinck, before the EU made all our music go metric'

The strategy is now obvious. We’re all to be bored so relentlessly about Brexit we’ll agree to anything.

Eventually Theresa May will announce the customs union will be replaced with a document known as “Ancient Rome Plus”, in which we’re all sold as galley slaves and ordered to pleasure the emperor, and we’ll all go “if that means it’s all over, then hurry up and sign it”.

Every single programme on anything now has to include a meaningless indecipherable discussion about Brexit. Tomorrow on CBeebies, we’ll be told Peter Rabbit jumped and bounced and shook his little rabbit tail as he ran across the field to see Benjamin Bunny. “Hello Peter”, said Benjamin, “that sort of freedom of movement will be curtailed in a no-deal Brexit”, he chuckled, “so with us to discuss this issue is Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, from Fur Without Borders, and Jacob Rees-Mogg who’s backing the hardline pressure group ‘Hoppit Must Mean Hoppit’.”

Every news channel sent 150 reporters to Salzburg for this week’s summit, because it’s vital for the democratic process that we hear as many witty references to The Sound of Music as possible. The senior ones started with “The prime minister will be willing to climb every mountain of obstacles relating to butter imports during the dairy phase of her negotiations”, then the junior ones would add “high on a hill is a lonely Slovakian MEP, for whom potential restrictions on the import of windscreen wiper blades after Brexit, is certainly not amongst his favourite things”.

But some of the debates are genuinely informative and entertaining, especially when it’s clear the politicians who have been yelling for 30 years that we have to leave the EU, clearly haven’t given a moment’s thought about how we do it now they’ve got their way.

So their answer to how we manage a border between Northern Ireland and the EU seems to be “we’ll do the things you normally do at a border a few miles away from the border”.

That’s the sort of thing someone says on Dragons’ Den when it’s clear they haven’t considered that their product will almost certainly catch fire. Next they’ll say “Alright then, Northern Ireland will still be a normal part of the UK, but it will also be in space. No hang on, we’ll reclassify Northern Ireland as a fruit.”

Then the people who want us to walk away with no deal say it won’t matter because we’ll adopt the rules of the World Trade Organisation. Then instead of being governed by the bureaucratic and unaccountable EU, our lives will be run by the WTO, a local bunch who we all know, as they pop round every afternoon, like a vicar in the 1950s.

Then they have a chat about doubling your interest rates, and forcing you to sell your garden to a multinational to build an aluminium plant, over a cup of tea and a lemon cake, because they’re accountable.

So this could appear like chaos, but it’s going fine, as maybe this issue isn’t meant to be resolved. Because for many people this isn’t about the EU, it’s about whether we keep believing we’re better because we’re BRITAIN, so bollocks to everyone else.

So whatever agreement is reached, they’ll complain: “This is a betrayal. There is NOTHING in this document about our right to poison all of Belgium’s fish.”

If we leave with no deal and the hardest Brexit, they will yell: “We’ve been betrayed. It was clear on the ballot paper the British people voted for having the weather forecast sung to us by the Black and White Minstrels”.

No one will ever satisfy the people who scream complaints such as “We used to have proper singers, like Engelbert Humperdinck, before the EU made all our music go metric so we went off key and now we’re full of industrial dubstep and mumble rap.”

Nigel Farage reminded us this week that there are so many immigrants here, it means patients can’t get an appointment with the GP. You could point out that half the country’s doctors are immigrants, so if you got rid of the immigrants it would be much harder to get an appointment with the GP. So he might as well say, “The reason our trains are so crowded, is because of all the space taken up by the train drivers. If we kicked them off, we’d get everywhere much quicker and with plenty of room”.

But it doesn’t matter, because their aim is to perpetually moan that we’ve been betrayed.

Then amidst the constant rumble of Brexit coverage, Nick Clegg told us this this week that one of the reasons the referendum result could be discounted was that politicians misled the public during the campaign.

Truly we can only bow in admiration at such staggeringly world champion lack of self-awareness. He said it with such calm authority that you could only gaze in awe, like watching Usain Bolt at his peak.

The majority of people appear to be exhausted by the whole issue so it’s hard to imagine how we might be able to bolster the enthusiasm to get everyone to cancel Brexit entirely, whatever Clegg thinks.

One way that some Remain supporters try to do this, through the good offices of Twitter and Facebook is to gently win round people who voted Leave by saying, “The reason we didn’t win your vote last time is you’re an idiot. Do you understand? You’re stupid. Apparently you’re cross about something or other, so you need to pull yourself together. Maybe try Pilates. Now this time concentrate and do as I say.”

This might work. Or maybe we’ll have to just see what happens, and live off grubs for a few decades.