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Making Britain grate again

12/21/2020

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​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
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I **** you so!

7/23/2019

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  • “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.  
   
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Has anybody here seen Boris?

6/24/2019

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How ironic that, having achieved fame, popularity and high office by being himself for so long, Boris Johnson, on the cusp of achieving the highest political office of all, chose to be someone else.
His allies, opponents and conscientious objectors alike were amazed to see a joke-free, stern-faced fellow masquerading as Johnson at the podium the other day declaring his credentials for the vacant post of unmandated (by the people) prime minister.
It clearly wasn’t the real Johnson: the short, neat hair, uncrumpled shirt collar and tidy tie-knot were tell-tale signs that an imposter was in the room. And I bet that behind that podium, not even a shirt tail was hanging out of his trousers.
It’s as if his minders, manicurists and manipulators, (all of whom would have been ridiculed by Johnson the political journo) had forgotten the reason why we got to this unlikely point at all:  all of Johnson’s foibles, failings and fiascos were, are, and always will be, his unique selling proposition.
Take those away and you’ve got just another boring politician.
The advantage of boring politicians, of course, is that they are generally reliable, sensible, and unlikely to throw a lighted match anywhere near a puddle of petrol.  
Mr Johnson, joyously, is the reverse, but thankfully with the added bonus that he can be counted on, most of the time, to forget the matches.  
The attraction of the ungroomed Johnson has always been the unexpected, the impromptu, the muddle, the mayhem, the shambolic:  what you saw was what you got. On the podium the other day, we saw what we won’t get – the smooth, the measured, the imitation of the grown-up. Nobody can keep that up for long.
So why try to repackage a product which is already a household favourite? It’s like tampering at your peril with the secret recipe of a much-loved fizzy drink.    
Because it turns out the Johnson product is unsafe.
 That’s the only conclusion from the reluctance of his campaign team to expose this lively, invigorating public performer and debater to a television shake-down with the rest of the pack now vying to seize the prime ministerial crown.
Or at least vying to be the second-to-last man standing when that crown is handed – who would have thought it? – to Alexander Boris Pfeffel Johnson.
I did think it, and did say it, a long time ago, at first playfully, but increasingly seriously -  this chap is going to be Prime Minister some day, one day, somehow, because everything goes his way: even when things go wrong, they go right.  
I should have put money on it, back in 2003, when it was obvious that Boris’s unbroken track record for breaking the rules and emerging from scrapes intact was transferring seamlessly from the journalistic Johnson to the shambolic political version.
That’s the Johnson magic – even when things seem to go pear-shaped, career-wise, they turn out fine.
And by the time he was sniffing at a political career, that magic was well-established: the chap now known universally by his second name, was, by the early 2000s,  becoming the celebrity darling of people who didn’t know any of his names; he was that funny posh blond bloke off the telly and everybody loved him, even if some were laughing at him rather than with him.
Boris Johnson had - and still has -  impeccable, usually accidental, timing.  Even when he loses, it just sets up a future triumph: how could political commentators have written his political obituary, as some did, the day after Michael Gove stabbed him in the back in 2016?  Hadn’t they spotted the Johnson magic, that absolutely certain self-belief, with much historical justification, that whatever can go wrong probably will, but it won’t stop the rollercoaster.  And if it does, he’ll just climb aboard another one.  
Even people who don’t like him like him, if you see what I mean, just for brightening up the dullest of days.
Or at least they did, until, for his own ends, he spread the Johnson magic dust over Brexit, and created a divided world of Boris backers and Johnson jeerers.
To be clear: Boris Johnson did not invent “Euroscepticism”: he did not march into Brussels as a young journalist and suddenly discover a world of malign Eurocracy which the entire Brussels press corps had missed or was prepared to overlook. Indeed, one of his predecessors on the Daily Telegraph, Alan Osborne, had made a mark much earlier writing very regular (true) stories about  Margaret Thatcher’s battle to get “my money back” from Brussels.
No, the bent bananas, curved cucumbers, Euro MPs’ expenses, private jets from Brussels to Luxembourg for a pampered Commission president, fish and farm policy excesses, the crazy notion of running a European Parliament based in three different capitals……all this and much were, I’m afraid, common currency – alongside a more positive daily diet of  the doings – and triumphs from time to time - of the institutions.  
What Boris brought to the party was his considerable writing flair, a vivid imagination, and, crucially,  an editor’s generosity with space on the news pages and encouragement for extensive Brussels-bashing. Ironically, that same editor subsequently threatened to emigrate to South America if Johnson made PM.             So we are where we are, and Mr Johnson is where virtually no-one thought he would ever be, mainly because he is now deemed by many to be someone who, even if they can’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, probably knows someone who can.
It could still all go wrong – but so much already has, without much effect on an impressive, erratic, Marx Brothers comedy capers kind of career which has rarely, if ever, faltered.
It’s not only been haphazard of course: Brexit, of course, was a shrewd, clinical calculation, which took an awful lot of effort on his part, involving much hard work debunking post-war European unity while invoking a Dad’s Army lexicon worthy of the pompous Captain Mainwaring.
By coincidence, just as his elder brother’s minders were cleaning up his act for a last push over the top into the Tory leadership, a newspaper printed younger brother Jo Johnson’s review of a book analysing Britain’s second world war legacy.
It begins:  “Much of Britain’s self-image and approach to the rest of Europe is rooted in enduring myths built up around the second world war………”
Did he have Boris in mind…?
 
 
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No Deal is a Good Deal is a Bad Deal is the Best Deal

11/14/2018

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 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. 
 
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Owed to Theresa

10/5/2017

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​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?

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Brexit Article 50: Day 1 -  Papa’s Got A Brand New Jag

3/29/2017

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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.

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BREXIT DAY 10

7/2/2016

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Of all the advice being dished out in UK newspapers about how to cope with the fall-out from Brexit, the best so far has got to be this: drive extra carefully when motoring in other EU countries from now on, because the cops will be out for revenge against Brits.

What Ian Crowder of the Automobile Association actually said was:  “Minor indiscretions may have been overlooked in the past but it is now even more important to abide by the letter of the law if you don’t want to be stopped and fined by EU traffic police”.

I assume he means traffic police in EU countries, because there is no “EU traffic police”, at least not yet, although it’s such an obvious idea that I’m surprised it wasn’t a bone of contention in the referendum campaign.

However, there was once a direct link between the EU and driving offences, and my personal experience of it was entirely positive and heartening.

It was the Spring of 1986 and I was piloting the family Meade through Spain when I overtook a car on a bit of road where it was illegal.  A traffic cop on a motorbike saw me, and pulled me over. He was very polite but insisted that he would have to give me an on-the-spot fine.

​
Then he said: “But it’s your lucky day, because to mark my country’s accession to the EEC this year , we are reducing all motoring fines against nationals of other Member States by 25% for a limited time only!”.  I thanked him profusely, welcomed him to the club and paid up with the pleasure that comes from feeling you’ve got something of a bargain.  Happy days!
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BREXIT DAY 9

7/2/2016

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I’m referring all queries about the stupidity of my country of origin to the Foreign Office or the Home Office or the British embassy in Brussels from now on.  It’s not my fault that we don’t have a German-style system in which matters of constitutional importance must obtain a minimum 75% majority to be legally binding in a referendum.  

When I explain point out that we don’t have a written constitution critics say that that’s not the point. The point is that you shouldn’t let issues of constitutional-style importance go through by such a relatively slim majority, because that’s just daft.  

At the very least the result should be subject to approval or ratification by Parliament, like it would be in the Netherlands, where referendum results can go all the way to the King if necessary. And what was David Cameron doing saying the result would be considered binding, when it doesn’t have to be?  

Listen, I say, don’t ask me, I'm the guy who got booed (affectionately, I like to think) when suggesting to a London audience earlier this year that the public shouldn’t get a vote on something so complicated and confusing and, ultimately, crucial, as leaving the EU..

​
And anyway what’s more democratic: a 52/48 victory for Leave in a public vote, or a (potential) two thirds-ish majority for Remain amongst MPs, who are of course the mandated representatives of the people in the first place?
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BREXIT DAY 8

7/1/2016

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The front door of Meade Towers is being repainted soon and the decorator arrived today to discuss colours.  As we stood on the pavement pondering the options on his colour chart, a “faceless eurocrat” who lives a few doors away came by, on his way back to his EU Commission office after lunch.  We haven’t met since about 15 days BB (Before Brexit) and he stopped to express his dismay and condolences at the result. I thanked him and apologised for being British. Then he noticed the decorator waving his bits of coloured paper and asked what was happening.  “I’m having the front door painted like a Union Jack”, I said, “but I’m having trouble finding the right shade of red”.
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BREXIT DAY 7

6/30/2016

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I’ve been kicking myself lately for not putting 100 euros on Mr Johnson for PM all those years ago instead of just going on about it. I could have got very good odds. Anyway, no need to worry, as the latest twist in the referendum saga puts BJ out of the running.  So my new prediction, hotly disputed by most who share my amazement that he’s given up without a fight after coming so close to the big prize, is that he will definitely be in the running  next time – as long as next time is far enough away for the fury at his antics has subsided. Meanwhile,  I’m apologising to my neighbours for being British. One of them took me a bit too seriously today, insisting with genuine warmth that there was always a place for the British in Belgium, after what we did for this country in time of war.
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