by Geoff Meade

When Theresa May first said that no Brexit deal for Britain is better than a bad Brexit deal for Britain, everyone assumed they knew what she meant – and that SHE knew what she meant. 
Everyone assumed she meant that we’d be better off without any deal at all than with a bad deal.
Because that’s what “no deal is better than a bad deal” seems to mean, right?
If that’s really what it means, the UK Treasury and Bank of England brainboxes have now made the PM look a bit silly by contradicting her and insisting that no deal would be a lot worse, economically, than any kind of deal, good, bad or indifferent.
But what if “no deal is better than a bad deal” is capable of another meaning?
After all, the sneaky ability of English to be misconstrued has often been very successfully exploited by British diplomats in European Union negotiations over many years. 
Indeed, linguistic ambiguity spices the wording of most EU Treaties, precisely – or, imprecisely – to win agreements, even at the risk of some post-facto argy-bargy over the exact interpretation of a key phrase in different language versions of the text.
This kind of ambiguity used to be considered an obstacle to clarity and is at the heart of most political satire and all of Theresa May’s Brexit language.
But a few years ago linguistic academics expounded a new theory that ambiguity actually helps communication and that people are quite capable of “disambiguating” an ambiguous form of wording based on the context.
I present to you the wise words of MIT cognitive science professor Ted Gibson: “Various people have said that ambiguity is a problem for communication, but the fact that context disambiguates has important ramifications for the re-use of potentially ambiguous forms. Ambiguity is no longer a problem — it's something that you can take advantage of, because you can reuse easy words in different contexts over and over again."
This seems to ignore the fact that if communicators avoid ambiguity altogether there is no need for their audiences to disambiguate.
But the point apparently is that ambiguity improves language efficiency by allowing for the re-use of short, efficient words that audiences can easily interpret with the help of context.
This clearly includes gems such as “Take back control” and “Brexit means Brexit”, but let’s get back to the phrase the PM coined nearly two years ago when setting out  her Brexit negotiating red lines: “No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.”
It seems to suggest that no deal at all would be preferable to a bad deal. 
But try it this way: “(There is) no deal (which) is better than a bad deal.”  
In other words, there is no deal that we could get that could be better than a bad deal because bad is as good as it gets.
If I was the PM’s communications chief I would now steer my leader towards acknowledging that this interpretation is what she meant all along, as it precisely matches the reality in which we find ourselves in.
And on this historic day when the rest of the EU agreed the terms of the withdrawal agreement,  she wouldn’t even have to admit that the bad deal she’s got  is a bad deal, because Jean-Claude Juncker clearly said that the bad deal she’s got is as good as it’s going to get which makes it a good deal and not  bad deal at all.
After all they’ve been through so far, I’m sure the great British public can disambiguate that without too much trouble. 
 

​So, Theresa had a cough!
I think the hacks should let her off
After all, such things occur
To lofty toff and common curr…
 
Who hasn’t choked upon their oath?
And spluttered, stuttered - sometimes both?
Who hasn’t wanted to retreat
Instead of standing in defeat,
Words all mangled, cheeks ablaze
Played out in the public gaze?
 
The PM’s thirst could not be quenched
As Tories sat with buttocks clenched
And there was Boris, near the front
Scenting blood, the end of hunt
 
He was not alone of course
In seeking to unseat this horse
 
But let all those who try to score
When the boss’s throat is sore
Be wary what they do or say
And don’t demean the wounded prey
(Recall that it’s the underdog
Who oft stands tall post battle fog)
 
So Tories, pick a safer fight
On grounds of, say, too left or right,
Or too mundane,
Or short of brain,
Or quite insane,
Or much too vain
Or even, (Boris close your ears)
Too much the clown, with big cloth ears
(By God, if Boris were quite fairly judged
His ambition would not much have budged
Beyond the echelons of those
Who pillory politicos!)

But let’s get back to poorly throats
And remember they win fickle votes…
Perhaps Theresa, after all,
Will profit from this mis-timed squall
Painted as a plucky sort
Who struggled on, though overwrought
Calm when a pesky man did strive
To hand out May’s P45
(If Boris wanted Brownie points
He should have felled him at the joints.
Yes, Boris with his rugby shape,
Instead of sitting mouth agape
Could have brought the “prankster” down
And been the toast of Tory town)

​So what the cost of Throatgate now,
If May’s bad throat we disavow?
If self-promoting pranks apart
We want to carp, where do we start?
It’s simple:  for conspirators
Who like dramatic theatres,
And those who simply want to scoff…
Ask who fixed the backdrop so
The effing F fell off?

I awake to hear that the world is waiting for the arrival of a letter. Its contents have been assembled in London and signed by Theresa Peut-Etre, the Primest Minister of the increasingly Untied Kingdom, and her letter is due in Brussels in a few hours. 

The letter’s progress is a source of media fascination. In an age of instant communications, the delivery mechanism is reassuringly archaic, particularly as the contents are well-known - those contents  could have been sent instantly in an e-mail, the original document first having been signed and scanned, which is good enough for a lot of legal documents these days.

But not this time. The letter was instead borne by special messenger to the white cliffs of Dover and thence across the channel that divides us to continue its journey to the capital of the European project. 

There it was passed into the hands of our man in Brussels, Sir Tim Barrow, who put it in a black briefcase and prepared to execute the one job demanded of a top diplomat  -  deliver.

While the letter was somewhere along the way, I decided to walk the dog, mostly to avoid listening to television and radio news bulletins speculating about where the letter might be.  

But first, on this very symbolic day, I chose a breakfast of beaked beans on toast as very symbolic of the things that divide we Brits from the rest of Europe.  

Then, resisting the temptation to wear my Union Jack bowler hat, I took Mikey the dog through the streets while I pondered yet again how we, the British nation, arrived at this state.

Mikey doesn’t care. He was abandoned in Sicily, brought back to live with us, and he is going through a barky phase. Other dog-owners tell me that it’s not a phase: he is a dog,  therefore  he barks.  It’s a bit like being Nigel Farage, which is why Mikey’s confrontations with other dogs in the street are now called Barks-it.

Mikey triggers Barks-it negotiations and pursues them until the opposing pooch either gets bored and goes away, or gets aggressive and refuses to budge. Which brings us neatly back to the confrontation about to begin.    

By noon I am outside European Commission headquarters, where tourists with cameras are taking pictures of film crews with cameras, who are filming people saying things about what might happen next.  This includes me.

While this is going on, Sir Tim’s chauffeur is putting the final shine (I imagine) on the lustrous black paintwork of the brand new embassy Jaguar XJ long wheelbase limousine which only rolled off the delivery truck outside the UK’s delegation office to the EU five days ago.

This is what you call keeping up appearances: for a long time. the official UK limo in Brussels was a German car we shall call a B*W.

Then Sir Tim’s predecessor as head of delegation, Sir Kim, who likes his cars and his nation, pressed the Foreign Office for a thoroughly British machine to wave the flag for the nation in the EU capital.  

This was a few years ago, before Brexit was a word but after Jag became Indian-owned, albeit still totally built in the Untied Kingdom.

Now, possibly with calculated timing, a replacement has been decreed, a fast new car as a sign, paradoxically, that the Brits are not going anywhere, even after we’ve left.

One of the Jag’s very first tasks, therefore, was to carry the dashing British plenipotentiary round the corner from his office to deliver the aforementioned letter to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk.

Sir Tim could have walked there quicker, as the car had to navigate a roundabout, which Sir Tim on foot would not. But he could hardly walk through the streets on such a mission while being pursued by reporters and film crews. Now could he?

​Thus Sir Tim, who is doing for beards and three-piece suits what David Beckham has done for tattoos, slid into the right-hand back seat of the Jag, clutching the briefcase containing the letter, and went on a very very short journey for a man, but an exceedingly long  one for (British) mankind.