Brexiteers and Remainers united

Boris Johnson warns the UK is heading towards a Brexit ‘disaster’ – but offers no ‘new ideas’

Armando Iannucci has ruled out a Brexit special of the biting BBC satire The Thick of It, on the grounds that it is “never going to be as absurd as what is happening” in real life. But surely Britain needs the apoplectic rage of the show’s antihero, Malcolm Tucker, in the corridors of power now more than ever?

According to the country’s leading Brexiteer, Boris Johnson, the UK is heading for “disaster” if Theresa May’s Chequers plan is agreed with the European Union. According to a leaked government briefing paper, if the UK takes what appears to be the only other option as far as the British government is concerned – and leaves the EU without a deal – it could result in economic “Armageddon”.

On reaching such a fork in the road, it might be wise to at least consider turning back. But, instead, our politicians are driving on regardless, squabbling among themselves as they go. May’s official spokesman said Johnson had failed to come up with any “new ideas” in a newspaper article criticising the Chequers proposals, while Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston said it was “no surprise to see the great charlatan blaming others for a mess of his own creation”. And former home secretary Amber Rudd stressed Chequers was “the best shot we have of Brexit that’s going to work for the UK”.

Someone should tell the EU’S chief negotiator Michel Barnier. Conservative MP and leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-mogg said yesterday that he and Barnier had found “considerable agreement that Chequers is complete rubbish”.

And so it seems, the EU, ‘hardline’ Brexiteers and, indeed, Remainers are all now united in thinking that the Brexit the UK government is intent on delivering is a bad idea.

Yet still May and her colleagues chant the “Will of the People” mantra while insisting that asking for the public’s opinion a second time would somehow be an act of betrayal. The reality is that Brexit itself is a bad idea and the supposed benefits have largely turned out to be, at best, the product of wishful thinking. To its credit, the UK government has sought to make the best out of a bad lot in order to limit the economic damage of leaving the EU, but as a result it has produced a proposed deal that pleases no one.

And if we plunge into the economic Armageddon of a no-deal Brexit, the wrath of Malcolm Tucker will be as nothing compared to the wrath of the British people.