March of the Lemmings Read online

  But even Brexit supporters with no feet might want to buy a shoe, if only to hurl at the television in case Gina Miller comes on Question Time. And they would probably want that shoe to cost as little as possible. And they wouldn’t care if it was an Asian shoe, as long as it wasn’t jumping the shoe queue.

  Rees-Mogg’s own two feet continue to fascinate all of us, and one can see why footwear would be of such importance to him. Rees-Mogg has always looked younger than forty-nine, especially when he was a child, though he is finally beginning to decay. However, a swift Internet image search will show that Rees-Mogg’s shoes have remained unchanged throughout Rees-Mogg’s life. Either Rees-Mogg is wearing a new pair of shoes every day, in which case one could understand his obsession with footwear prices and their relationship with EU membership, or some more sinister factor is at play. Rees-Mogg’s shoes, always shiny, always bright, never scuff or age. I looked at 570 consecutive photographs of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s unchanged shoes online and then gave up, the horror seeming to tear at my throat.

  In The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, a man sells his soul to the devil or something, I expect, and there’s a drawing of him and it gets old and he stays the same. Brexit rots in front of our eyes, wilting on the vine. But Rees-Mogg’s shoes remain unchanged. And who is this ‘nanny’ who has accompanied him since birth, guiding his political progress, steering us towards our doom? Whatever diabolical deal the footwear-obsessed freetrade evangelist struck, I just hope it was worth it.

  What a smug, unpleasant article. Another column poking fun at BJ, JRM and leave voters? It’s hardly work, I would have thought they could have an algorithm to churn them out by now. This is lazy writing. Karl Gibson

  The hedgehog lifespan is 2–5 years, so yes it seems likely that Gove’s infamy will outlive his proteges. Izzy The Dram

  Just the sort of sardonic sneering that underscores why Lee and supporters of the Remain cause are so despised by the majority of the country. And why they lost. Vivrant Thing

  Humourless drivel as per usual. As a self acclaimed ‘comedian’ he should be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act. Four Cough

  Prepare yourselves for a no-Christmas Brexit in 2019

  23 December 2018

  Merry Christmas, Brexit Britain! And a crap EU year!! It’s me, guest Christmas Observer columnist Father Christmas!!! Or Gender-Fluid Parent/Carer Winterval, as Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Disaster Weight Loss Haircut Bullshit Johnson probably pretended the EU insisted on calling me, in his lying column in the Daily Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper. But whatever name you know me by, I ho ho ho hate Brexit!1

  While Christmas is expected to progress as usual this year, unless you manage to extricate yourselves from exiting the European Union pronto, Britain had better start making plans for a no-Christmas Brexit in 2019. Stop up your chimneys, deep-freeze your figgy pudding and stockpile your stockings! And it doesn’t matter who has been naughty and who has been nice!! Because Santa Claus ain’t comin’ to Brexit-town!!!

  Like a lot of business people whose work involves moving large numbers of goods over a succession of borders and/or the transportation of hoofed livestock across different national boundaries, the possibility of a no-deal Brexit leaves me pretty much up the creek of shite mit keine paddle. The existence of the European Common Aviation Area, for example, has avoided some of the awkwardness that accompanied my circuits of the Earth in the ’50s, when I was regularly pursued across Europe by hostile Cold War fighter jets, Rudolph’s tedious nose making us an easy target for state-of-the-art missile systems.

  And although I do appreciate that many unscrupulous employers exploit this, the fact that the short-term seasonal staffing needs of my Finland workshop can be fulfilled each festive season without friction has meant I have still been able to meet all my toy manufacture and delivery targets, each and every year. And that’s despite needing to service a global Santa-believing customer base that has expanded significantly, year on year, since I first transitioned myself from a folkloric Yuletide nature spirit into a Christianised personification of the winter season sometime in the early seventeenth century.

  Take the Irish border question, for example, and it’s a shame you never did. I have no desire to go back to the bad old days of the ’70s, when I was shot down between Armagh and Dundalk, kneecapped and then had all my presents stolen and resold to fund the revolutionary struggle. Little Tommy in Cork was crying because he didn’t have a Stretch Armstrong; meanwhile, a post office north of the border was on fire.

  And furthermore, at the moment I can save an enormous amount of time, on what is already a very busy night, if you don’t mind me saying so, by traversing the island of Ireland east to west and back again, as the crow flies, from Belfast in Northern Ireland to Donegal in the Republic of Ireland, without the necessity of customs checks on my gifts (are they up to EU standards?) every time I cross the border, or on my livestock (do they carry foot-and-mouth disease?), or on my small green-clad seasonal staff (do they have the relevant legal paperwork?).

  Even assuming that this was all smoothed over by some frictionless arrangement involving yet to be invented technology, which it won’t be in the event of a no-deal Brexit, then there is a further problem. I take off from Lapland, which, as part of Finland, is an EU member state, so it is not even certain whether I will be able to land in Britain at all, unless its future relationship with the European Common Aviation Area is maintained.

  I wrote to the Department for Exiting the EU, asking, in the event of me not being allowed to fly over the UK after Brexit, if I could do my British deliveries on land? They invited me to enter a lottery for one of only 2,000 European Conference of Ministers of Transport permits, allowing me to complete my cross-Channel deliveries by road. Do they know who I am? Clearly not. Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?

  Put it this way. If you leave the EU with no deal, then I can promise you, people of Britain, that irrespective of whether you have been naughty, i.e. you voted to leave, or nice, i.e. you voted to remain, Christmas 2018 will be the United Kingdom’s last Christmas. And there is no room for further negotiation.

  If you want to make all that extra work for me, then as far as I am concerned, some other mug can be Britain’s own personal Santa in 2019, ’cos I ain’t doin’ it! Perhaps next Christmas the job of Father Christmas could be done, in quick succession, by David Davis, Dominic Raab and then some anonymous fall guy no one’s ever heard of, the Lee Harvey Oswald patsy of Brexit.

  Clad in a red, white and blue Brexit Santa suit, Raab could fly over the land in his sleigh, scattering valuable medicines and tinned foods to the bedraggled people traversing the ruined Mad Max wasteland of post-Brexit Britain.

  Or perhaps Boris Johnson could be Santa. He has the physique, and the international aspect of the job would give him a chance to display his well-loved facility for diplomacy in a variety of different nations.

  Now, in closing, a lot of people ask me: do you exist? To which the simple answer is: no, obviously not. But there is a more complex answer. I do exist, but only if you really, really, really believe in me. And in that respect, I am very similar to Brexit.

  What garbage. Seriously. Zico44

  ‘Prepare yourselves for a no-Christmas Brexit in 2019’ That would be about the only good thing from Brexit – ending this shopping spree madness. Waterlilli

  That was an excellent satire! Can you do one for us Brexiteeers too. We could start off with Scrooge in his factories with his poor EU workers that he sources through freedom of immigration! Or what about the EU banning you from flying Rudolph on grounds of it now being animal cruelty to expect animals to work on Christmas Eve! I enjoyed your Brexit Satire, but would still love to see a Remainer Satire too. Fair’s fair. Libertyisnotgiven

  The single worst article ever written. Mapatasy

  Oh dear, Project Fear mongers scraping the bottom of the barrel now. After a Clean Break Brexit, not only will we all starve next y
ear, there will be lorry queues at our ports stretching to the moon, you won’t be able to buy so much as an aspirin from the pharmacy, and now … now, Christmas will be fucked as well. Hilarious. Go and hawk your Project Fear drivel to the moron Remoaners who will listen to your drivel. Hector Bloodbath

  1 I wanted this column to look as if it had been written by, and be attributed to, Father Christmas, but there was some legal or technical reason why the Observer couldn’t do this, although I think it finally appeared with a Father Christmas hat Photoshopped onto my head in my byline photo. Ironically, if they had used an actual photo of me taken at the time, I would have looked exactly like Father Christmas. Firstly, I was really fat; and secondly, after I finished touring the last show, which contained lots of Brexit material, I decided to grow a massive beard so no one would recognise me and I wouldn’t be murdered in the street by a Leave voter (you know what they’re like). I now looked so like Father Christmas that I was able to make a great Santa at my daughter’s school that year, and I played the part using the plummy voice and abrasive personality of the former Island Records A&R man Nick Stewart, who discovered U2, and whom I had recently interviewed for an article about The Long Ryders for Shindig magazine. One of the girls’ mums told me her daughter said that usually Santa was just a man dressed up, but this year it was amazing as the real Santa had actually come to their school. I am keeping the beard to see how the next stand-up tour, Snowflake/Tornado, plays with a hairy face, and in case there is more Santa work next Christmas.

  With Brexit gifts, it’s the thought that counts

  6 January 2019

  The new year slips in, tailgating quietly through the closing crack of the old, and the elderly Brexit-voting racist relatives you tolerated through gritted skull over the festive season, their presence turning Christmas into a three-dimensional LBC phone-in, to be survived only with the anaesthetic of alcohol, have departed.

  But blood is thicker than water. And so are your elderly Brexit-voting racist relatives. They are also thicker than egg-nog, thicker than Harvey’s Bristol Cream, thicker even than Sainsbury’s Turkey Gravy mixed with the actual fatty juices of the bird and then left congealed in a Pyrex™ pint jug for five days, until finally scraped away by a hungover uncle into a squirrel-gnawed council food-recycling bin. And now it is time to write these saboteurs their thank-you letters.

  ‘Dear Auntie Gladys. Thank you very much for the Chinese air pollution masks you gave us for Christmas this year. Toxic nitrogen dioxide levels are 50 per cent more than EU legal limits outside our kids’ schools here in London, so the masks are sure to come in handy in order to help us respire. I agree. It is lucky we will be leaving the EU in March so we can stop wearing them, as the stupid red tape from Brussels will no longer apply. As you say, Auntie, “Up yours, Delors!”’

  ‘Dear Auntie Caddis. Thank you very much for the four-pack of baked beans and the toilet roll you gave us for Christmas this year. I will put these in the Anderson shelter in the cellar with the cheese crackers, to stockpile in the event of no-deal Brexit food shortages. I understand that you remember the war and what fun it was, especially jiving with the GIs in exchange for nylons, and so you are doubtless looking forward to the camaraderie the coming hard times will generate in dancehall toilets and picture-house cloakrooms. I think you will find, however, that “our coloured friends” will still be here, as they are from Africa and Pakistan, not Poland. You’re right, though, the man in the corner shop is “lovely” and is “not like the others”.’

  ‘Dear Auntie Gladioli. Thank you for the book vouchers you gave us for Christmas this year. I will put them in the Anderson shelter in the cellar to use as hard currency in the event of a no-deal Brexit. And yes, Barbie from Love Thy Neighbour was a lovely girl. It made fun of both sides! I’ll have a half!! Brexit means Brexit!!!’1

  ‘Dear Auntie Gadfly. Thank you very much for the leftover high-blood-pressure tablets, flatus filters and spare suppositories you gave us for Christmas this year. I will put them in the Anderson shelter in the cellar with the inhalers and the rabies vaccine, to stockpile in the event of no-deal Brexit medicine shortages. It was kind of the woman in the chemist’s to let you have them. And yes, you are right, she is “not like the others” and is “quite westernised, really”. Take back control!!’

  ‘Dear Auntie Caddisfly. Thank you very much for the autobiography of Michael Caine that you gave us for Christmas this year. It is interesting how things in the ’60s were different to things in the ’40s, and things now are different to things in both those times, though some other things have stayed the same, or gone back to what they were like in the first place, having been different for a period of time in the middle, which was bad. As Mrs Gove said to Michael Gove on Brexit day, “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” You’re right, though, Lady Caine seems very elegant and “westernised” and is not like the other Muslims. Not a lot of people know that!’

  ‘Dear Auntie Savage. Thank you very much for the set of illegal zombie knives you sent me for Christmas this year. They will, as you suggest, come in handy in fighting the civil war that is sure to engulf the country if “the will of the people is not respected”. I agree that we should all practise with them by stabbing things, perhaps our own feet? And yes, you are right, hands are probably better than feet, but some feet could pass for hands and have been quite “handified”. I think you’ll find we voted to leave!’

  ‘Dear Auntie Zavvi. Thank you very much for the record tokens you sent me for Christmas this year. There is no need to worry, as HMV, despite being in administration due to the pincer movement of downloads, streaming, online sales and Amazon’s tax avoidance, have agreed to honour the tokens. That said, I am going to put them in the Anderson shelter in the cellar, alongside the book tokens Auntie Gladioli sent, to use as hard currency in the event of a no-deal Brexit. You are right too, Nipper the HMV logo dog is not like the other dogs. He listens to an old Edison Bell cylinder phonograph like a Victorian Englishman and seems quite “humanised”.’

  And I am in the grey street, drunk and banging a dustbin lid with a bread sauce-smeared wooden spoon. You! You stole your grandchildren’s dreams. Get out! Get out and get back to where you came from!! Inside, I pen my own below-the-line online critique. ‘It’s writing like this that caused Brexit!’ And on it goes. And on and on. Happy New Year.

  1 I have a vivid memory of watching an episode of the now understandably unbroadcastable race-relations sitcom Love Thy Neighbour on TV in a caravan site in Tenby, South Wales. I was on holiday with my mum’s parents, who looked after me a lot when I was young and she was working. I assume it was 1978, when I was nine or ten, as I remember that Queen’s nauseating single ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ was on heavy rotation on the jukebox in the club room. At the end of the episode, white working-class socialist racist Eddie (Jack Smethurst) ends up dancing naked around a tree at night to remove a voodoo curse he believes his black Tory co-worker Bill (Rudolph Walker) has put on him, and you see his bum and everything. I was quite traumatised by it. Maybe that is why I hate Queen so much. My gran loved the trade-union bloke, Jacko Robinson (Keith Marsh), in Love Thy Neighbour, who only drank halves of bitter and always said, ‘I’ll have a half.’ ‘There he is,’ she would laugh, ‘old “I’ll have a half”!’ Some would argue that suppressing material like Love Thy Neighbour created the blocked back passage that exploded into Brexit. Certainly, Smethurst’s white working-class Labour supporter, who is also deeply racist and profoundly opposed to immigration, is a trope that the metropolitan Left forgot existed until Brexit reminded them. I don’t know what I think any more, other than that it’s probably good that you can’t say ‘nigger’ on TV as a term of abuse over and over again. I watched the Love Thy Neighbour movie on the Amazon channel last year and found it fascinating and oddly stylish in a cinéma-vérité kind of way. While the men were depicted as confrontational racists, their wives, Joan and Barbie, were peacemakers, in a knowing echo of Aristophane
s’ fifth-century bc comedy Lysistrata.

  Why did the BBC let Andrew Neil combust?

  3 March 2019

  This week, supposedly unprecedented spring wildfires raged across dry, bushy and exposed areas. On Monday, having dealt with serious incidents at Saddleworth Moor and Hundred Acre Wood, teams of specialised firefighters also attended the small piece of Shredded Wheat that lives on top of Andrew Neil’s head.1

  Dozens of grateful weevils were saved from certain death in the breakfast bisc inferno by the firefighters and rehoused in temporary accommodation in the nearby clumps of Andrew Neil’s ear hair, while his nostrils became emergency treatment centres for scorched pests.

  Andrew Neil’s head wheat had begun smouldering when he heard that Penny Mordaunt MP had agreed to be filmed for This Week, making the case for hard Brexit while swimming around a giant floating model of the UK in Liverpool’s Royal Albert Dock.

  Neil’s morning bisc crown had crumbled during the blaze, and so its remains were eaten as a This Week green-room snack by Michael Portillo, who lapped up the wheaten fragments with warmed milk from his dish, like a pleased cat.

  Nonetheless, weatherwomen smiled cheerily on Tuesday as they announced the hottest British February on record. Their happiness perhaps tells you that the so-called ‘climate change’ situation isn’t as serious as the doomsayers and gloom-mongers out there would have us believe. After all, if it really was too hot for the daffodils to survive, wouldn’t they just stay in the ground and wait?

  Last week, The Times’ Quentin Letts and Julia Hartley-Brewer’s Julia Hartley-Brewer both tweeted, with delight, that they were able to ski across the Swiss border unhindered. This apparently showed that there was no need for a British border in Ireland, because of blah blah blah shit piss wank.2 It also proved that it can’t be that hot, as otherwise there wouldn’t be any snow, which is all made out of coldness, like in Frozen.