The woman who thinks she is the British prime minister was reminded she is not earlier today by a phone call from her boss in Northern Ireland.
The woman in question was due to announce a breakthrough in the stalled Brexit negotiations with the EU when she was stopped in her tracks by her mobile ringing.
The ringtone is reportedly ‘Ode to Joy’, chosen in a moment of ironic good humour on the weekend when she thought they’d finally scribbled down a way to keep everyone happy on the back of an envelope someone found rolled up and shoved into an empty fag packet.
“Arlene didn’t like what her junior intended to offer on the grounds it is ideologically impure,” an intern working at Downing Street told LCD, “so I think she got on the blower and told May no way, unless you can shake down the money tree for £2Bn Euros. It’s also possible that she is concerned, from her political standpoint, that an exception for Northern Ireland that puts the customs border in the Irish Sea does make a unified Ireland more likely.
But Arlene will probably be surprised to discover that Brexit itself is going to do that regardless because it’s a wrecking ball smashing into the UK and will break it into pieces.
It’s why Dave Cameron buggered off in gutless haste. So maybe, if you don’t want NI to leave the UK, stop supporting Brexit.”
While it is a little embarrassing for Ms May to have the rug pulled from under her feet at the last moment, it has most likely saved her from working out how to say she was prepared to cut a special deal for one region of the UK, on the very real grounds of risks to people being hurt, but every other region will have to carry on and be economically ruined.
No more so because of the possible disproportionate shift of investment and jobs to Northern Ireland to remain in the sanity of the single market and customs union.
“Arlene has saved her own region from a lot of potential employment by her insistence that where she lives must go over the cliff edge with the whole show.”
It’s not imagined what the solution will be now to progress Brexit negotiations to the stage where the much larger economic power of a bloc of nearly half a billion people with some massive economies becomes the first to offer the U.K. a take it or get stuffed trade deal.
“May will work out how to get through to the stage where it is really clear her agenda completely disempowers the UK internationally, and that taking back control means taking it from the UK and gives it to ten people in Northern Ireland temporarily before handing it lock, stock to anyone who cares to boss it.
It’ll just take a bit more time. But stick with her. She’s bound to have another bright idea any moment that will lead to another catch 22 in which the UK comes out looking like a bunch of headless chickens again. It what’s we do now.”