Brexit, Boris, and St. Peter

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*A new golden age? Illustration: Chris Riddell*

Boris Johnson dies…
His soul arrives in heaven and he is met by St.Peter at the Pearly Gates. Welcome to Heaven,” says St. Peter. “Before you settle in, it seems there’s a problem: We seldom see a Conservative here and we’re not sure what to do with you.”

“No problem, just let me in; I’m a believer,” says Johnson.
“I’d like to just let you in, but I have orders from the Man Himself: He says you have to spend one day in Hell and one day in Heaven. Then you must choose where you’ll live for eternity.” “But, I’ve already made up my mind; I want to be in Heaven.”
“I’m sorry, but we have our rules.”
And with that, St. Peter escorts him to an elevator and he goes down, down, down, all the way to Hell.

The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a lush country house garden. Standing in front of it his dad…and thousands of other Conservatives who had helped him out over the years…….
The whole of the “Right” was there.

Everyone laughing…happy…casually but expensively dressed.
They run to greet him, hug him, and reminisce about the good times they had getting rich at the expense of the “suckers and plebs”. They play a friendly game of croquet and then dine on lobster and caviar.

The Devil himself comes up to Johnson with a frosty drink, “Have a Marguerita and relax, Boris!”
“Uh, I can’t drink any more, I’m watching my weight,” says Johnson, dejectedly.

“This is Hell, Boris: you can drink and eat all you want and not worry, and it just gets better from there!”
Johnson takes the drink and finds himself liking the Devil, who he thinks is a really very friendly guy who tells funny jokes and pulls hilarious nasty pranks kind of like an Oxford undergrad.

They are having such a great time that, before he realizes it, it’s time to go. Everyone gives him a big hug and waves as Johnson steps on the elevator and heads upward.

When the elevator door reopens, he is in Heaven again and St. Peter is waiting for him. “Now it’s time to visit Heaven,” the old man says, opening the gate.

So for 24 hours, Johnson is made to chill with a bunch of honest, good-natured people who enjoy each other’s company, talk about things other than money and treat each other decently.

Not a nasty prank or mean joke among them; no fancy country seats and, while the food tastes great, it’s not caviar or lobster. And these people are all poor, he doesn’t see anybody he knows, and he isn’t even treated like someone special!

Worst of all, to Johnson, Jesus turns out to be some kind of hippie with his endless ‘peace’ and ‘do unto others’ stuff. “Whoa,” he says uncomfortably to himself, “Margaret never prepared me for this!”

The day is done, St. Peter returns and says, “Well, then, you’ve spent a day in Hell and a day in Heaven. Now choose where you want to live for eternity.”
With the ‘Jeopardy’ theme playing softly in the background, Johnson reflects for a minute, then answers: “Well, I would never have thought I’d say this – I mean, Heaven has been delightful and all – but I really think I belong in Hell with my friends.”
So Saint Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down, all the way to Hell.

The doors of the elevator open and he is in the middle of barren scorched earth called Brexit Britain covered with garbage and toxic industrial waste…

He is horrified to see all of his friends, dressed in rags and chained together, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags. They are groaning and moaning in pain, faces, and hands black with grime. The Devil comes over to Johnson and puts an arm around his shoulder. “I don’t understand,” stammers a shocked Johnson, “Yesterday I was here and there was a country house and we ate lobster and caviar….drank cocktails.

We lounged around and had a great time. Now there’s just a wasteland full of garbage and everybody looks miserable!”
The Devil looks at him smiles slyly, and purrs, “Yesterday we were campaigning; today you voted for us”

Unknown author. If it’s you shout out and we’ll credit you

• • •

British EXIT: As part of a campaign pledge to win votes from Eurosceptics, the Conservative prime minister David Cameron promised to hold a referendum if his government was re-elected. His (pro-EU) government subsequently held a referendum on continued EU membership in 2016, in which voters chose to leave the EU with 51.9 percent of the vote share. This led to his resignation, his replacement by Theresa May, and four years of negotiations with the EU on the terms of departure and on future relations. This process was both politically challenging and deeply divisive within the UK, with one deal rejected by the British parliament, general elections held in 2017 and 2019, and two new prime ministers in that time, both Conservative.

Under Boris Johnson‘s majority government, the UK left the EU on 31 January 2020; trade deal negotiations continued within days of the scheduled end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. The British government postponed the implementation of import controls for goods entering the UK from the EU until 2022 in order to reduce supply issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. Custom controls only applied to British goods entering the EU during this period.

The effects of Brexit will in part be determined by the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement signed on 30 December 2020, which was provisionally applied from 1 January 2021 when the Brexit transition period ended, and which formally came into force on 1 May 2021 after ratification processes on both sides were completed. The broad consensus among economists is that it is likely to harm the UK’s economy and reduce its real per capita income in the long term and that the referendum itself damaged the economy. It is likely to reduce immigration from countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) to the UK and poses challenges for British higher education, academic research, and security.

Some more Brexit humour to stay sane

*Please note: The post-apocalyptical fiction section has been moved to Current Affairs. Sign in a book shop window in Cornwall. Photo: @TheStephenRalph*

Why does Britain like tea so much? Because tea leaves

Bergensia; Not even the most British of all things British the Monthy Pyton could invent comedy as silly and laughable idiotic as the way reality now plays out in what once was referred to as Great Britain. To stay sane we all need to laugh about it.

Let’s first define the term Brexit;

Brexit n
(no-one-knows)
1. the undefined being negotiated by the unprepared to get the unspecific for the uninformed

Now that was the easy part, let’s try to explain it somehow deeper through some analogies:

Celebrity food critic Jay Rayner shared a Michelin star Brexit analogy on Twitter – perfectly summarising why we need a second referendum. It said:

I’m not saying there wasn’t a democratic mandate for Brexit at the time. I’m just saying if I narrowly decided to order fish at a restaurant that was known for chicken, but said it was happy to offer fish, and so far I’ve been waiting three hours, and two chefs who promised to cook the fish had quit, and the third one is promising to deliver the fish in the next five minutes whether it’s cooked or not, or indeed still alive, and all the waiting staff have spent the last few hours arguing amongst themselves about whether I wanted battered cod, grilled salmon, jellied eels or dolphin kebabs, and if large parts of the restaurant appeared to be on fire but no-one was paying attention to it because they were all arguing about fish, I would quite like, just once, to be asked if I definitely still wanted the fish.

“Yes Minister” forecasted Brexit back in 1981.

Britain has had the same #ForeignPolicy objective for at least the last 500 years – to create a disunited #Europe””… “to make sure the common market didn’t work; that’s why we went into it”