It has come to our ears that in order to secure this week’s fourth Meaningful Vote (MV), Government has come up with a cunning plan. It has decided to replace all references to the “European Union” with “Lalalaland”.
Over the weekend, Westminster strategists have been desperately trying to come up with new ways to sell the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) a fourth time to the House of Commons. Since the Speaker’s ruling, Government has added the so-called European leaders’ letters of clarification – in essence, brief cliff notes for MP’s explaining the 585 pages of the WA in laymen’s terms – for MV2. It then ditched the non-binding Political Agreement for the third vote. Now the idea is to replace all references to the EU with “Lalalaland” ahead of the prospected fourth vote.
One source told LCD Views that “this allows us for almost every no-voter to come on board”. Remoaner MP’s would not care to severe the UK’s ties with an oneiric place like Lalalaland, whereas the Little England ones would not be bothered to take rulings from it, he added. “It also has the advantage of smothering any concerns about the vilified backstop. Who cares if we have a land border with Lalalaland, or regulatory alignment with it?”
For legal purposes, somewhere hidden in the 585 pages of the WA would be a footnote explaining that Lalalaland stands for the EU. But what if MPs will find out about this? Our source: “Hahaha. You don’t actually think they actually read all 585 pages of the WA, do you? [Continues laughing hysterically. Five minutes later: ] Well, we only must prepare for two persons who might actually read it: Dominic Grieve and the Attorney-General, Geoffrey Cox.”
“We already dealt with the former by sending in a horde of paid Leave-zealots to his Constituency in Beaconsfield. He will be distracted by that for the time being, we hope. As to the Attorney-General, we plan on sending in Raab and Rees-Moog. They will distract him in his office bestowing upon him the virtues of a Brexit deal, like sovereignty from the ECJ and tax evasion possibilities once Raab becomes PM.”
If you have any ideas how the Government might sugar-coat the fifth, sixth, etc. vote on the WA? Do share your cunning suggestions on Twitter @emielnachtegael