Boris Johnson has declared war on France, leading the charge in a flotilla of pedalos. Fearless Johnson was reported to have said:
In other news, it is the local elections in England, Wales and Scotland today. Make sure you vote and don’t vote for a swan or a signet.
In our occasional series of Brexit satire we offer you Railway Modeller and The Northern Farmer. Plus a fact checker to help you tell Brexit facts from fiction.
FICTION : AC DC’s Angus Young does not have a signature hormone fed steak pie. He has a signature Gibson SG.
FACT : Australian beef is hormone injected. It can be selectively fed to children and vulnerable people as UK Government rules allow for cheap food to be dumped on schools, the NHS and care homes. Our EU membership protected us from dodgy food standards but we opted for a blue passport.
FACT : Liz Truss has NOT struck a great trade deal with Japan. Japan benefits five times more than we do. Our desperation to get Brexit done makes us an easy target for “fire sale” type trade deals. Truss wants to claim success by striking a deal with Australia. We will pay for this dearly. Free trade in 15 years time will decimate the economies of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of England.
FICTION : Boris Johnson is not a train enthusiast. Allegedly he paints cardboard buses.
FACT : The rebrand of Great British Railways is an expensive distraction. See Grant Schapps’ ludicrous flag shagging video filmed with emotional music at the National Railway Museum in York, shortly to be renamed the Great British Brexit Museum.
FICTION : Mallard is not being put back into service, nor The Rocket to power HS2.
FACT : The Australian trade deal will spell a sharp decline in farming in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
FICTION : Ringo Starr is not stuck in the tunnel from Scotland to Northern Ireland. The tunnel is a work of fiction rather like Brexit.
FICTION : Jennifer Arcuri is not a farmer. She is about to release a TV drama in which she describes her sex life with Johnson : “We read sonnets to each other, then he rolled onto me like a binbag full of custard, gasping like an asthmatic octogenerian, as he reached his climax & I wondered if he’d got it in yet”.
In this edition of the Daily Maul, we cover BOJONA-21 – the New Variant Brexit. It seems that the Brexit deal we did has mutated, so now we must waste more time and money trying to get a new deal after we already left. Fat chance. Read the terms and conditions.
The Maul also covers the Australian deal, an exposé into the private life of Boris Johnson and a new hardcore approach to immigrants by Priti Patel. As always, a fact and fiction checker has been prepared as it is hard to tell the difference between farce and fact with our Government.
FACT : Australian beef is hormone injected. It can be selectively fed to children and vulnerable people as UK Government rules allow for cheap food to be dumped on schools, the NHS and care homes. Our EU membership protected us from dodgy food standards but we opted for a blue passport. Liz Truss faces a dilemma on whether she kills British farmers or British children.
FICTION : Poots is not undergoing conversion therapy but he does need to re-take CSE History and Science.
FACT : Priti Patel has had some ‘tough girl’ photographs taken so she can look tough on immigrants. At the same time Liz Truss will be agreeing to give Indians freedom of movement as part of her Brexit “fire sale”. This is all grandstandin on Patel’s part to make her look like she is respectin the will o’ the people. It’s just a photo scam.
FACT : In other news The Department of Health wanted to send 1.6 million pieces of PPE to India but the Treasury stopped them because of Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel’s overseas aid cuts. Noice
Get in touch to find out how you can help on the ground or on social media.
FACT : The new DUP leader Edwin Poots is a creationist who claims that the earth is only 6000 years old. Just when you thought that it could not get any madder than Arlene Foster …
FICTION : Boris Johnson is not full of custard. He is however full of shit.
FACT : “Sir” David Frost continues to pretend that Brexit is the fault of the EU. Frost is a serial failure as a civil servant who got lucky by suggesting that he would be a useful liar for the Government. In an astonishing move, Frost said that noboby expected Brexit to cause problems in Northern Ireland. Marina Purkiss sums it up well. Sounds a bit like the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition sketch …
Yesterday’s “Domshell” revelations from Cummings are out there for all to see. However, Cummings managed to sidestep one vital issue. The extent to which the Government’s decisions on COVID were themselves informed by the obsessive need to “Get Brexit Done”. Here we report on the Cummings and Goings after a brief interlude from a spoof edition of “FHM Magazine” which illustrates the type of gaslighting we will be expecting in the cummings days:
Cummings could hardly admit that his pet project of Brexit was in any way a cause of the indecision, cronyism, delay and lies put forward to fool the public about our world beating deaths under COVID and the losses of lives and livelihoods due to stop start lockdowns and failure to use circuit breakers under the advice of scientists. However, it is plain to see that Johnson used COVID as a mask to “Get Brexit Done” last Christmas, when no-one seemed to care about anything else other than turkeys and an end to the COVID crisis. Johnson was able to railroad his own MPs and the opposition into signing a deal with zero scrutiny. We are only just beginning to see the outfall of Johnson’s decisions on Brexit, see Brexodus and to misquote a well-worn phrase “the worst is yet to come”
At the most basic level, our problems with COVID deaths and emerging Brexit problems are a resourcing and time management issue in Government and The Civil Service in spite of best efforts on the part of most people. No other civilised country in the world has tried to deal with a pandemic PLUS a constitutional coup at the same time. Stretched resources meant that decisions were either not taken or delayed. Bad decisions cost lives in a pandemic, at least 150 000 unnecessary COVID-related deaths. The decisions made by Johnson’s Cabinet were masked by lies, which also grew on an exponential scale alongside pandemic deaths.
Although Matt Hancock has been served up to face the public, he is not the root cause of the problems with COVID deaths. They go back to the irresponsible decision to Get Brexit Done alongside the pandemic and the people who pushed for this are strangely silent. Lest we forget their names:
If we are to learn anything from Cummings, it is that a full public enquiry into Brexit needs to be done NOW. Write to your MP using the resources provided by Paul Bowers on this site and demand that this be done TODAY.
We warned of the problems from dither and delay over a year ago in March 2020. Cummings revelations are welcome. If he is now to clear his record, he must go further and admit that the toxic combination of Corona crisis + Brexit disaster has delivered a Britastrophe. I am not forgiving Cummings yet, but his candour is welcome and I believe his testimony. To quote some well worn phrases:
Desperate to avoid responsibility for the breakdown of the Good Friday Agreement, Johnson seeks to place the blame on the EU. He and his henchmen describe the EU’s position as “purist” and demand that the EU show flexibility. As usual, where Brexiteers are involved, matters are not so simple.
During the referendum campaign, the sillier Brexiteer parents made little placards stating “We want WTO” for their children to wave at demonstrations. Except in the case of tariffs, that is precisely what they got. Non-tariff barriers, which include health and safety regulations applicable inter alia to sausages,, have since 1 January 2021 fallen under WTO rules in trade between UK and the EU. One of the strongest principles of WTO is non-discrimination between members. If one member ‘relaxes’ rules on one or more products to the advantage of another member, then it must extend the relaxation to all the others. So, if the EU abandons the right to check sausages and other processed meats brought into Northern Ireland from Britain, it is bound to do so for the US, Mexico and other WTO members exporting meats such as sausages. The EU negotiators therefore have practical grounds for rejecting the UK demand, to protect their single market.
It is in fact the British government which is open to the accusation of being unreasonably purist, by refusing to align with EU food standards. For over 40 years we have lived comfortably with these standards – and indeed helped to draw many of them up. Now we refuse to solve the Northern Ireland problem by aligning because “it would compromise our sovereignty”. This is dogmatic bigotry. If Johnson and his regime stick to it at the expense of the Good Friday Agreement, any resultant bloodshed will be on their heads, and theirs alone.
By Adrian Ekins-Daukes
Five years on and Brexit’s still undone. I often get quaint looks when I talk about Brexit in Kent now and some subtle or even less subtle social disapproval. For the record, I’m quite happy to be considered to be “so last year” until I am returned to the soil by my maker, or Brexit is placed in a shallow grave, whichever comes soonest. Brexit is in fact undone now that Johnson has realised he never read the contract. It will never be “done”. I told everyone that we’d be doing Brexit for the next 50 years and it begins to look that way. In five years it becomes apparent that we still don’t know what Brexit means but we are beginning to make some evaluation of what Brexit has brought us.
£2.3 Trillion was lost in just one month from the city of London. Just for comparison and scale, that’s 58 years’ worth of our contribution of £39 billion to the EU wiped out in just one month. So, we would have to make up our losses due to Brexit until 2079 just from this impact alone. Let that sink in!!
Our Australia trade deal is worth 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. It would take 2000 deals like this to even make up our losses from our arrangements with the EU. At a generous estimate of our rate of deal making, we can expect to make up the losses from Brexit in trade deals by the year 3021. I know that’s bad economics as not all trade deals are worthless and some also take years not months but I think you should get the point.
£37 billion has wasted on test and trace. That’s more than what it takes to land a space mission on Mars at a mere £22.5 billion. Our contribution to the EU is £39 billion per year.
Despite promises made to fishermen on Brexit, the UK fishing industry will have been filleted by the time any new arrangements come into being with £1 Million being bled from the fisherman every DAY. Yet, we plan to spend £200 million on a Royal Yacht that the Royal family do not want or need. Brexit McBrexitFace will no doubt spend its time trawling international waters trying to net trade deals without catching anything more than scurvy.
Brexit shrank UK services exports by more than £110 billion over a four-year period. That’s 3 x our yearly contribution to the EU, much of which we get back.
Farmers have also been sold down the river with the introduction of hormone fed beef and the dumping of poor quality products into UK markets, just so that Liz Truss can claim success.
The building industry is beginning to show cracks with materials shortages and other supply chains being affected.
Food and drink exports from UK have declined by 50% since the beginning of 2021.
The UK has been on a downward slide in terms of our overall credit rating.
Coming soon, having lost EU steel import protections, our steel industry now faces a wave of cheap imports.
Brexit has been all consuming on Civil Service bandwidth and this means that there have been numerous areas of neglect. For example: social care, Grenfell, The Northern Ireland protocol and citizenship issues remain undone with massive consequences for lives and livelihoods. 305 000 people are caught in civil service backlogs for settled status and Johnson says he will not budge on the deadline of June 30th with impact on breaking up families and imprisonment at borders. Big issues in 2016 are still issues in 2021 due to the significant entropy of Brexit on progress across the board of Government.
“You can stay but your kids can’t”.
We are yet to see the whole impact of the end of the grace period at the borders but already all major supermarkets have imposed rationing on tinned tomatoes with food shortages predicted in the coming months and the army on standby.
There have been notable increases in racist attacks, tension between Brexiteers and Remainers and a disunited Kingdom.
And, of course, far from taking back control of £350 million per week for the NHS, Dido Harding is on the way to privatising your NHS. Was this on the side of a bus?
We did not need to do Brexit to deal with immigration. Our hostile environment has discouraged Europeans to work here. In particular we have seen a sharp decline in fruit pickers, care workers and other professions. The arguments made by Brexiteers to “grow our own” have not gathered any takers …
The destruction of peace in Northern Ireland has already begun by the reckless abandonment of the Good Friday Agreement. Johnson promised there would be no border down the Irish Sea. He broke that promise, ending 30 years of peace on the island of Ireland. Kate Hoey has been cynically and dangerously stoking the fires of unrest in Northern Ireland, having promoted Brexit.
The destruction of the United Kingdom has begun with Scotland seeking independence, reunification of Ireland and independence movements beginning in Cornwall and the North East. Independence for Scotland and unity for Ireland are of course good things and entirely predictable consequences of Brexit. In extremis, England will be reduced to the People’s Republic of Thurrock by 2040!! Gibraltar has special status as a means of dealing with the fact that the majority of residents work in Spain. In 10-20 years time we can expect Gibraltar to be under Spanish control. The same goes for The Falkland Islands, The Channel Islands and The Isle of Man.
The UK is now a four nation state and a one party state with no effective opposition. It may sound hard to say this but Brexit is as much a product of a passive and fearful opposition than it is the result of a hard core of Brexit ultras and psychopaths.
Britain no longer has a special relationship with the USA as President Biden seeks to re-educate us about the realities of breaking international law. At the same time Biden has forged stronger links with Europe as a natural partner of similar size in terms of trade and other opportunities.
Protest is now being clamped down on, using COVID as an umbrella to hide under. Boris Johnson is to remove the powers of the Electoral Commission after they asked awkward questions about the redecoration of his flat.
Crony contracting continues as The Good Law Project reveals details of companies offered lucrative contracts based on personal networks rather than competence in the chosen industry. If you are to shrug and say “so what” to this, these contracts were for PPE. This means that people will have died unnecessarily because of faulty selection procedures. You may well say that the pandemic demanded a speedy response. Well the speediest response would have been to select companies with the capacity and competence to make the products rather than novices.
My own MP Mr Rehman Chishti is under investigation for having his hand in the till over property development scandals. You can help by reporting him to the bar council.
We have still not found the identity of the Tory rapist. Is this an example for our children to look up to?
It now seems that our children are to sing a Soviet styles song in school to unite the country. I have a better suggestion – see the song below
A collaborative effort to mark five years of Brexit carnage from Greg, Lisa, Patricia, Irina, Andrew, Adrian, Mike, Helga and the good people at Re-Boot Britain. Join us every Monday to Break Brexit Before Brexit Breaks Britain.
As a business consultant and author of 12 books on leadership, I was asked to explain how a model for change offered valuable insights on how we might change minds on Brexit. The Gleicher formula offers a model for thinking about change. You can find a full treatment of the model and my modification in my 2016 book for Bloomsbury “Leading Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise“.
When applied to our strategy for change, some observations may be made:
A – CREATIVE TENSION Whereas there is massive creative tension (dissatisfaction) with the present situation re Brexit, it is by no means shared. Our fieldwork on the ground shows that many people who previously described themselves as remainers no longer believe that Brexit can or should be reversed. This is what I called “Learned Helplessness” in the book “Let’s Talk About Brex it“. For example many young people at the Reading Festival last week think that Brexit is irreversible. Some were surprised to learn that we are still attempting to renegotiate the Brexit deal as it has been airbrushed out of the media by all political parties.
ACTION : We must work on awareness that Brexit is not done, with individuals, communities and of course political parties. See communications strategies below.
B – SHARED VISION This is the area where Remainers struggle the most. There are multiple diagnoses of the routes to rejoin. Some think it can never be done, others think it will take 20-30 years, others much shorter timescales. Some think it can only be done by working on politicians, others on voting systems, others on the ground, and so on. A lack of leadership and shared vision is a hardy perennial in the Remain movement and our work on Scenarios to Rejoin could be used to help focus people on the more viable pathways to Rejoin.
ACTION : This is the most urgent area for attention. It requires leadership, strategy and structure. It is itself a major obstacle to progress. In the first instance, please join us every Monday to help refine our Scenarios for Rejoin. Longer term we must convert these into strategies and persuade leaders and opinion formers of the value of having a shared vision of the routes to Rejoin.
C – ACTIONABLE FIRST STEPS In the absence of a shared vision, we have a scattergun approach to C. Some say we cannot wait for strategy and we must do something, almost anything to change the situation. Others say we must wait for the needed clarity, yet it has not been forthcoming in the last five years. Purposeful action arises when there is clarity on item B. In the meantime our four objectives at Re-Boot Britain are a useful interim set of goals. Others have similar ambitions, expressed differently but there is good coherence amongst grassroots groups about what needs to be done. It is a case of gathering, harvesting and multiplying that work. Interim goals such as the Customs Union and Single Market may be stepping stones on the journey, but one must also be minded of the fact that such things will radically reduce the pool of people and interest groups that want Brexit stopped. For example, once industry is satisfied about the way things are, reclaiming the rights of 68 million people may be much more difficult. The goal of “logical incrementalism” versus an “all or nothing” strategy must be thought deeply about. Our Government understand this, hence attempts to buy off sectors with inducements, in order to reduce the pool of people who remain unhappy about Brexit. Play this forward five years and it is not clear that a Rejoin movement of any size would exist at all. The time is now in terms of working on all elements of the change model, even if some of the actions are preparatory.
ACTION : We can all act to call Brexit to account, by continuing the conversation about Brexit Carnage and the lack of benefits coming through. What are your top five daily actions as an individual? What can you do with others in your local area?
D – COST OF CHANGE Undoing something is always harder than doing it. As we diverge further from EU alignment, it becomes more and more difficult to Rejoin. This is perhaps one of the reasons why the Brexit ultras wish to do this. Never forget that Brexit was won on emotion and not a plethora of facts. Rejoiners need to think more about how we can talk Leave voters down from the mountain. At an individual level, the book Let’s Talk About Brex it is a how-to guide on changing beliefs and even identities on the Brexit debate. We plan a series of masterclasses on the processes of change. Join us every Monday via ZOOM to find out more.
ACTIONS : Your call
Please write to me to flesh this short piece out. I am happy to expand upon this article with your views.
In our latest round up, we report on the tsunami of project reality stories on Brexit now starting to appear. Our extensive work on the street confirms that most Leavers are now extremely angry about being lied to. Leave voters now understand the toxic cocktail of Corona + Brexit on their lives and livelihoods. This is why our Government is spending another £1 billion telling us to “Get Ready for Brexit”. We’ve already spent similar sums of OUR taxes TWICE!
Leave voters are astonished to learn that Brexit means they will have to:
Pay for private health insurance. In 2019 the average cost of private health insurance in the US was $20 576. This is why Boris Johnson uses the euphemism “Get Ready for Brexit”. “Get Ready for Death” does not trip off the tongue quite so well …
Pay additional phone roaming charges. The EU outlawed these charges. At the moment, phone companies have indicated that they will not reintroduce the charges, but, of course, everyone budgets are stretched, they will be allowed to do so and Brexit will provide them with the perfect excuse for reintroduction of roaming charges.
Register your pets for trips to European countries 4 months before travel. The EU Pet Passport will no longer apply.
Apply for work permits and visas. You may also need an IDP.
We have been warning of these effects for nearly four years. Our Tunbridge Wells correspondent sums it up well:
“If we insist on taking up a position like Belarus, we will be treated like Belarus” – Adrian Elkins-Daukes
If you are not sure of the rules, check the official advice on GOV.UK
This week, it was revealed that part of the garden of England will be converted into the largest lorry park in Europe, as part of desperate attempts to divert gridlocked traffic from the M20 and M2 after Brexit. This will produce a plethora of problems:
Only 2% of lorry drivers are certified to travel to the EU. This will lead to shortages in supply chains and other impacts. The Government has withdrawn its advice on what hauliers have to do under Brexit.
Michael Gove reported that the lorry park project is to cost £705 million or “one Johnson Jet paint job”. Much more importantly, the cost to businesses is estimated by HMRC at a staggering £20 billion per year.
In order to maintain refrigeration for chilled food and pharmaceuticals, lorry drivers will be forced to run their engines, spewing diesel into the Kent countryside around Ashford, Canterbury, Thanet and the Cinque Ports. We face the difficult choice of food and life saving drug shortages or smog in East Kent with considerable impact on climate change.
Ashford Council were not consulted about these arrangements. This appears to have been done under a direct power and land grab from the council. Even Tory MP Damien Green has complained about the manner of the desperate changes.
Meanwhile, Manston airport is to be re-opened as a logistics and passenger terminal, long after a review concluded that it was too far away from London to be seriously considered. Desperate times call for desperate measures … this is clearly another Brexit unicorn.
One of the biggest proclaimed benefits of Brexit was the statement by Jacob Rees-Mogg that Brexit would result in the removal of a tsunami of red tape. It seems that Jacob was lying and we find that the red tape will be replaced by blue tape. We are not troubled by the colour of the tape, just that it exists. And it’s not just the hassle factor of 215 million customs declarations a year for individuals and businesses. The FT reported an additional cost of £7 billion EVERY year.
“If it’s good enough for India, it’s good enough for us” – Jacob Rees- Mogg
Our writing is part of our overall ambition to restore trust and decency in politics. Please support our work at Go Fund Me.
It seems that Leave voters elected to “take back control” of the UK for the following reasons:
So an unelected technocrat could run the country (Dominic Cummings)?
So Russian oligarchs could infiltrate our institutions and spread communism through the country?
So that our NHS could be sold off? Yesterday Parliament voted against protecting the NHS from foreign control in case you missed this amidst stories of a 3 year old baby in a 3 month old baby’s skin.
Answers on a postcard please.
Our activism is not supported in any way. Please support our work to Re-Boot Britain via Rage Against The Brexit Machine
Some translations of recent populist oratory aka mutterings from the Dominic Cummings’ car boot camp of catchphrases. They fit neatly into the vernacular of the dodgy used Brexit car salesman. Whilst we are here:
“There was no suggestion of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum”
We did not look for any interference so none was found
“We’re taking back control of our borders, laws and money”
We are spending £20 billion per year on red tape
“Security is not political”
We have handed over our national security to Russia
“The NHS is not for sale”
We just passed a law that allows us to sell the NHS
“We’ll pursue an Australian Brexit deal”
There is no such thing as an Australia deal
“Good British common sense”
Mob rule
“Strong and Stable”
Dogmatic and insipid
“Let me be clear”
Stand by for mendacity and obfuscation
“Let’s move on”
I don’t have an answer that won’t embarrass me.
“Brexit means Brexit”
We still don’t know what the fuck Brexit is …
“We’re all in this together”
We’re in this for ourselves and fuck the rest of you
“We’re committed and determined to do whatever”
We’ve no intention of doing anything
“Stay at home, Control the virus”
Go on a road trip with a baby and spread the virus to Geordies
“There will be adequate food” (Michael Gove)
We are prepared to let the poor starve
“Tough choices”
Easy victims
“Get Brexit done”
Sit on our hands and pretend to negotiate, but in reality do sod all
“People I speak to on the doorstep tell me”
I don’t speak to those plebs but they voted us in and this is what we’re going to do so fuck off
“What the Great British public wants”
I don’t feel I can argue this point, but we’re in power and we’ll do what we please – fuck off!
“Let us be clear”
Let me fill the space with some meaningless drivel
“No deal is better than a bad deal”
We have messed up completely, totally lost out, can’t give in so we quit
“World-beating”
No one else counts
“We are not lowering British Food standards”
We just passed a law that we are lowering British Food standards
Thanks to Chris J. Stafford, Tony Vail, Charlotte Beyer, Finn Jackson, Don Adamson, Dominique Boulliez, Bill Sylvester, Edward Holmes, Nicola Tipton, Andrew Wallace, Jane Berry, Paul Anders, Stephen Corsham, Andy Janes, Sue Banting, Richard Henson, Nikki Fothergill, Jeremy Clarke, Arno Elout
