The Tories would cover their bums in marmalade and sit in a nest of wasps if it meant we could leave the EU

If Conservatives are prepared to ruin the economy and break up the nation for Brexit, what other barmy stuff would they do? Well, elect Boris Johnson for one

Mark Steel
Friday 21 June 2019 07:52 BST
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Conservative leadership bid: Results of fourth ballot

We’re in safe hands. A two-to-one majority of Conservative members who will choose our next prime minister would be willing to accept “significant economic damage” to secure Brexit. Even more, would accept a break-up of the UK.

I expect 85 per cent would be happy to “have the house filled with fox s***, even the fridge, and the cupboard full of broken board games and the coffee pot if it ensured Brexit”. Seventy-nine per cent “would be prepared to hand their children to a trafficking gang for up to nine years” if it meant we definitely left the EU on 31 October, because sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the greater good.

We might be crawling through the woods eating maggots, but at least we’ll know the EU can’t tell us they have to be less wriggly or we can’t call them maggots.

It looks like they’re getting the leader they want. So within his first three weeks Boris Johnson will take us out with no deal, Scotland will be placed under UN control, Bedfordshire will become a disputed territory with Nato imposing a buffer zone that stretches to Kettering, the Lake District will be part of Morocco, Northern Ireland will declare war on the Dalai Lama, and the coast of Essex will be governed by the Church of England Caliphate of Clacton, peace be upon it – and he’ll have a 98 per cent approval rating from his party.

Some of us will reassure ourselves that many Tory MPs are violently opposed to him, but they’ll issue statements that start: “I’m aware I pledged if Boris Johnson becomes leader I would become a suicide bomber to blow him up, and let the remains of his floppy hair scattered across my charred body be a lasting epitaph for this holy act; but upon consideration, I believe he’s an excellent leader and I’m delighted to serve under him as junior minister for kiwi fruits.”

Every morning he’ll announce his ideas for new projects, boasting, “Today I’m proud to inform you I’ve planned an escalator to Finland. We’ll start by using the existing excellent structure at Debenhams in Oxford Street, then as well as stopping at the first floor for kitchenware and light fittings, passengers will be able to stay on and go to Helsinki. Look, I’ve drawn it on this bit of cardboard in crayon.”

Rory Stewart claimed Johnson has offered city status for constituencies in return for support, but this will be denied by the MP for the city of Shropshire North, and by Sir Dorset, the county that has now been knighted for services to drink driving on country lanes.

Then he’ll sort out Brexit because the problem before was Theresa May was too soft. He’ll use the powerful weapon she was never prepared to employ – telling the EU that we’re BRITAIN so they can shove their regulations up their arse. Because we used to run Africa and Ceylon and all sorts.

This will work, but then the next day the mayor of the ancient city of Sparta will demand we hand over all our children as slaves, because they’re SPARTA and no one shoves them about, so we’ll have to give in.

He’s already proved how effective he is when facing up to obstinate world leaders. Because when he intervened in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, jailed by the Iranian government for “spying” while in Iran on holiday, he told their officials she’d been teaching there which is the lie their government had claimed all along. They used this as evidence and she’s still in jail.

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So Johnson can try this approach with the EU. After his first summit he can announce: “I was extremely firm, as it was, errr, Emmanuel Macron who said we owe £80bn and I told him in no uncertain terms where to go. And now we owe £90bn and every woman from Kent has been sentenced to 20 years in a French jail. One of those things and all that.”

After this promising start, Johnson will run into trouble. However much we leave Europe, it won’t be enough, and he’ll start to wonder if the EU is really what’s making all his party members so angry.

Because even after the harshest no-deal Brexit, they will be in the audience of Question Time, yelling: “I’d spent all my life bitter about some issue that’s probably to do with my parents thinking I’d failed them, and my sense of entitlement to an unattainable lifestyle, and I’ve constantly blamed this on external factors such as immigrants I never encounter and people on benefits and the EU. And now I’ve got everything I wanted and I’m still not happy, SORT IT OUT JOHNSON.”

But there’s an advantage to our probably next prime minister as he’s not tied to any ideology, which is why he pondered over whether to support leaving the EU or remaining in it, according to which would improve his position among Conservative members. For an extra boost, he said Muslim women looked like letterboxes.

He’ll say anything if he thinks it will push his ratings up, so we can get him to do whatever we want. Every Muslim in Britain could join the Conservative Party, then he’d say “Right, yes, as-salam alaikum if you will, always loved a letterbox, my favourite street furniture.”

And the EU should have a laugh with the Tory members, offering a deal on the Irish backstop so we can leave on 31 October, but in return they all have to cover their arses in marmalade and sit in a nest of wasps, and they’ll all go “YES” and be very, very happy.

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