If you ask people to sum up in one word what the hell the Brexit referendum was really all about, some say “control”, and others (wilfuly ignoring my one-word limit) mutter “Johnson’s ego!”.
But the three most popular responses in my random survey turned out to be “cake” (said with a giggle), “fish” (raised eyebrows), and “sovereignty” (ironic air-quotes).  And that’s just the Brexiteers…
Cake, because Boris Johnson famously threw down the gateau gauntlet even before the 2016 vote by declaring that he was pro-cake and pro-eating it – a cheeky declaration that the UK was determined to leave the Union and still keep the tastiest benefits of being a member state.  
Fish, because of the symbolism of the UK’s fishing stocks being bartered in the  passionately-fought and always headline-grabbing haggling every December over EU catch quotas for the following year. Regardless of months of pre-planning by officials, those end-of-year ministerial marathons routinely lasted several fractious days and nights:  one year, the negotiations went on for so long that Santa Claus turned up in a red suit and white beard and delivered light relief in the form of gifts for each national delegation. (That, I promise, is a true story.)   
Sovereignty because sovereignty, derived from the Latin word superanus, is what the British people have apparently regained, after being ruled over for so long by an oppressive EU regime which, according to cakeman Boris, saw the UK forced into all sorts of unpalatable policies despite seemingly able to avoid some very big ones, including the Schengen agreement, Economic and Monetary Union and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
In fact, at the time of departure from the club the UK had more “opt-outs” from EU policies than any other member state.
This, argued Remainers, was a fine example of our clout as a Gold Star club member and a good reason to stay in.
On the contrary, said Leavers, such a degree of semi-detachment was clear evidence of the need to disengage completely. 
But let’s get back to cake.
Johnson’s “pro-having and pro-eating” cake stand certainly attracted interest when he went public on this crucial issue months before the Brexit vote. 
However, it was only after the referendum result made Brexit a reality that the cake challenge was taken up, unofficially, by the EU side, in the form of European Council President Donald Tusk.
He forensically deconstructed Johnson’s defiance of the fundamental logic of the nearly 500-year old saying that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.  Your cake, explained Tusk solemnly, is either on your plate or you eat it.  
It was as much an attack on a confusing English idiom as on Boris, who, being a hapless Foreign Secretary at the time, was not used to being taken seriously. (Even today, as Prime Minister, his tongue, cake permitting, is firmly in his cheek as often as possible.) 
In fact, I fully expected Boris to respond that Tusk’s analysis was faulty because he, Boris, always ensures that his plate is carrying at least two pieces of cake at all times, thus enabling him easily to both have his cake and eat it.
This would bring him closer to the austere Russian equivalent of the cake pro-cake concept, which is simply to say “You can’t sit on two chairs.”  Even then, I guess Boris, after doubling up on cake supplies to ensure he had plenty to eat while preserving the same amount, would claim he probably could.   
Anyway, one lasting legacy of our EU membership seems to be that some European Commission officials in Brussels have now adopted the word “cake” as a universal term to describe any attempt by any member state to make daft demands in negotiations in future.  That alone is a legacy to be proud of.
Which brings me to my point, which is that there is not one reference in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement to cake. Fish gets a mention, of course, and sovereignty is there in spirit, because it’s taken on an almost spiritual, mystical value in the Brexit saga, but cake is entirely absent.
It’s surprising that the EU side didn’t try to force it into one of the document’s nine annexes to protocols, simply to press home the Tusk message  - or even insist on explicit wording obliging the UK to acknowledge in writing that the principle of having cake and eating it cannot be invoked in any formal governmental dealings with the Union.  Perhaps Euro-MPs will modify the text when they get round to ratifying the accord…
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson remains free in principle to use his first visit to Washington under Joe Biden’s presidency to take time to nip ten kilometres south of the White House and stage a self-congratulatory photo-opportunity at a family-owned bakery which happens to be called “Pro Cakes”.  It’s in the Iverson shopping mall in Temple Hills and has a great reputation for custom-made wedding cakes and cupcakes - just a thought for the Downing Street press and communications team, but I only recommend it if Brexit is going terribly well.  
At the moment, things just seem to be going terribly, what with Northern Ireland still sort of in the EU, Gibraltar requiring Brits to show their passports on arrival in the British Overseas Territory, and UK fish and meat exports to the EU rotting on dock sides because of new and complicated post-Brexit paperwork which Boris said wouldn’t exist.
UK government officials say the floundering fish problems are just teething troubles which won’t last long. But EU Chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has now pitched in to suggest publicly that a lot of these structural cross-Channel “regulatory frictions” will become the UK’s new normal.
I suspect that naughty Michel, having emerged from the Brexit negotiations with flying colours for his sangfroid and dignity in very difficult circumstances, is trying to have his gateau and mange it too…
 

​So this is how it ends: dinner for two in der Leyen’s den: Boris enters the belly of the Brussels beast one last time in a desperate attempt to snatch compromise from the jaws of confusion.
“Come in Mr Johnson, I’ve been expecting you,” purrs the European Commission president, wearing a monocle and  stroking a black cat.
Prime Minister Johnson’s reply is a sly grin, the only grin left in his dwindling armoury of charm. He adjusts his Churchillian stoop, ruffles his trademark shock of already distraught blonde hair, and delivers his carefully prepared introductory ice-breaker:
“Good to see you in the flesh, Ursula old thing. Listen, I’ve often wondered – what’s the German for ‘Golly gosh, it’s all a bit of a bugger’s muddle’?”*
At the time of writing, there is still no news of her response. But we do know that, after a masked balls-up of a joint photo-opportunity on arrival at Ursula’s massive private residence (which also doubles as her office), the pair used the pandemic as the perfect excuse to keep  far away from each other over a very fishy dinner.
Before the first sip of the pumpkin soup starter had been slurped, the prime minister also made clear that he would be socially distancing himself from any Brexit details as well, lest he be stricken by the dreaded TB (Tory Brussels) virus which has felled a wide range of   Conservative Party leaders in the last forty years.
“But what about our talks on fair competition, governance and fishing?” demanded Ursula.
Boris rolled his eyes: “Oh it’s all bunkum, Ursula! Actum est onus Domini piffle!”
Ursula shook her head: “Yes but piffle can be vitally important, especially in the EU…”
The PM grinned: “You know the word piffle?”
Ursula nodded: “Yes. It is the same in German, ein Haufen Piffle.”
In the absence of hard post-match evidence of the meeting’s content (COVID meant there were no spectators despite a clamour for tickets), your correspondent has had to rely on someone vaguely familiar with how the top-level Brexit date-night unfolded.
The PM apparently spent time moaning about how his Brexit front-line team had run out of ideas for getting his “oven-ready deal” out of the cooker without getting the nation’s fingers burnt. And how he didn’t have time for the Brexit piffle, when his entire life was dedicated to “making Britain great again”.
But things had already gone a bit pear-shaped from the minute the two sat down together, according to my fairly unreliable source……
First, Ursula raised her glass to toast a bright, sustainable, diverse EU-27 future based on a robust, deliverable strategy founded on equality, mutual respect and common purpose for all stakeholders once the Brits have disappeared.
Boris, non-plussed, dribbled soup down his tie and then, regaining his composure, did his  brilliant Trump impersonation to declare that “Britain will prosper mightily with or without a Brexit deal. In fact we will prosper mightilier than any country has ever mightily prospered, anywhere in the history of the world!  !”Ursula sat back and smiled. “That’s very good Mr Johnson – may I call you Mr? – but it is this superior attitude which has got your country where it is today. Maybe the American way is better for you Brits. How is your Biden impersonation?”
Boris shook his head: “A bit tricky actually. I can’t seem to talk as slowly as him. Trump’s much easier to copy.”
Ursula nodded: “Of course he is - as are you: Michel does a very fine impersonation of you….
Boris looked up: “Me? Really? Good old Barnier! Top man!”
Ursula: “Yes. Michel will miss you when this is finally over…..what is it you English say….like a hole in the brain?
Boris:  ”Hole in the head: he’ll miss me like a hole in the head.”
There was silence at the table until the soup plates were cleared.  Over the main course, Boris complained about his Brexit team who were “so hopeless that they had actually dragged me, the bally Prime Minister of all things, into this whole Brexit end-game fiasco!”
Ursula politely acknowledged that one of the perks of any top job was supposed to be that you simply got good people around you to do all the donkey work. But it never worked like that.
Boris perked up: “Exactly! Exactly!  You see Urs – can I call you Urs? – we agree:  we’re  more ‘blue-skies, tour-d’horizon’ sort of chaps.”
Ursula shook her head as she prodded an English scallop of Italian and Greek parentage which, until very recently, had been minding its own business swimming in a borderless sea off Ostend until fate steered it towards a German-owned French trawler with a Romanian crew.
“I am German” she said softly. “I do details. Macron and Merkel, we all do the details, the piffle, as you call it. The problem with you British politicians is that, when it comes to the European project, you are all ears and no knickers.
Boris corrected her: “We are all mouth and no trousers….”
Ursula nodded: “Thank you. I am learning a lot tonight.  You are all about grandstanding and making slogans…….  
Boris leaned earnestly cross the table, until his nose squashed against the perspex anti-COVID divide: “But that’s my thing, Urs. Details are terribly boring. I do the broad-brush stuff and help out with the messaging. Always have! Always will!  That’s what’s got me where I am today!”
He tried to lean further forward, but his DG Health and Safety-approved dining-seat belt kept him tethered the requisite two metres away from the president. “Here’s  a slogan you can have Ursula, cos it soon won’t be any use to us ……..A Treaty a day helps you work rest and play!”
The rest of the conversation was described by my source as downhill all the way after the prime minister described to Ursula a recurring dream he’d been having since the end of 2016. In it, the newly-elected Donald Trump, a fine and wise chap who had endorsed Brexit and was Boris’ best chum, flew to Brussels and stood in front of Commission headquarters to face a massive crowd, in fact the biggest crowd in all of crowd history, to declare: “Mr Junker! Tear down the Berlaymont!”
The pavlova was devoured in stoney silence, as was the cognac, as were the Apres Huit mints.
At the time of writing, the whole negotiating soap opera might be called off by the end of Sunday December 13,  because, some say,  no deal is better than a bad deal (a statement that can be taken two very different ways).
Or we might be Brexit-ing on until the last minute of the last hour of the year. Or maybe longer, because even when it ends, it won’t really be over.
Because as far as the European Union is concerned,  Boris Johnson will always be the chap  who made Britain grate again. 
 
end

• “If the day ever comes that Boris Johnson becomes tenant of Downing Street, I shall be among those packing my bags for a new life in Buenos Aires or suchlike, because it means that Britain has abandoned its last pretensions to be a serious country” - Max Hastings, Daily Telegraph editor, October 10, 2012.

 
I’ve just checked and there are a dozen flights a day to Buenos Aires from London, some quite cheap, so no problem if Max wants to do a runner. He may not be alone: there may be enough people leaving to club together to charter a plane and save cash.
In that same 2012 article in the Daily Mail, Max declared: “I would not take Boris's word about whether it is Monday or Tuesday.”
It is in fact Tuesday, but Max has a point: Johnson’s opening words to the Party faithful on being declared leader were: “Good morning, everyone”.  But, as a radio presenter covering the event live immediately pointed out, it was already afternoon – another mis-step, he joked, from a man who has managed the transition, it appears, from seemingly lovable and cuddly to toxic and divisive.
Max Hastings sent Boris Johnson to Brussels as a hack in 1989, encouraging the young man’s florid and often flawed coverage which has been in the spotlight ever since the blond bombshell puts his considerable weight behind the Brexit campaign.
Max even sent his EEC correspondent a herogram urging him to be “more pompous”, which pleased Boris no end. And when his time in Brussels ended, Max promoted him in London for doing a great job.
But times change, and how!  Who knew then that one day, in the very distant future, Boris, with the benefit of a borrowed comb and a decent gent’s outfitter, would seize the crown?
Well, at the risk of blowing the only trumpet I’ve got, I kind of did, not in the Brussels days, but as soon as the Johnson, buoyed by further journalistic success in London and television celebrity through chat shows and “Have I Got News For You”, began dabbling in politics.
The fact that he twice survived breaking promises to his bosses, including the formidable Conrad Black, not to stand as an MP while employed full-time in journalism, simply reinforced the notion that this fellow, for whatever reason, could do no wrong and was a vote-winner: even those he irritated and annoyed recognised his giant personality and the charm.
And when university students started postponing going to the pub on a Friday night until after they’d seen that blond bloke on the news quiz programme (I have scientific evidence), it seemed clear where this was all heading, however long it took.
I said to all and sundry: "Mark my words, one day that chap will be prime minister." I was dismissed as a loony back in 2002.
It’s not that I want it to happen, I said, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that Boris has…….something indefinable: people will back him the minute they see him, they already cheer his every utterance, they delight in his gaffes, his clownish, impish side; he’s like no one else you know.
“Yes but”, everyone said, and I had to agree that they were right.  Normally. But Boris isn’t normal. In a good way.  And, yes, sometimes in a bad way.  
And yes, anything could intervene - and often has – to upset this rollicking, runaway applecart.  Yet just when my prediction seemed to have reached a sticky end, something, some serendipitous force, often beyond Boris’s control, would right the applecart, and our hero would be back on his unspoken track to the top. And he has remained amazingly, defiantly, untouchable. 
My wife threatened to divorce me – not in protest against Boris, so much; more because she said that, if he ever did become prime minister, which he wouldn’t, obviously, I would wake up every morning thereafter and start the day by saying: "I told you so”.
When Boris was felled by Michael Gove three years ago during his first leadership, my wife sent me a text: “I don’t have to divorce you after all.”  It looked like game over for Johnson and for my prophesy.
Then, in a bizarre, gob-smacking, left-of-field decision which only underpins the rationale behind my prediction in the first place, Theresa May, having become PM, picked Boris off the floor and elevated him to the role of Foreign Secretary. 
You see, I said, you see!  This is what I’ve been talking about all this time! The Johnson force-field has intervened once again - he SHALL go to the ball! Even if it takes a little longer.
Which it has. 
So, as Max Hastings packs his bags and heads for the airport, I apologise to those who know me for banging on for so long about what has just happened.
I take no joy in being right, if only because, stupidly, I didn’t think to nip to the bookies in 2002 and bet a newly-minted 100-euro note on what has just happened: I don’t want to know what the odds would have been, or how rich I would have become.
I am now trying to stave off divorce, but I do insist on being allowed to say “I told you so” once a day for at least the next month.
And then I’ll shut up.
And maybe it’ll all work out just fine…….but I wouldn’t bet on it.  
   

 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.