Here’s a pre-Christmas party game. Each player comes up with a word to fill the blank in ‘If Brexit was a …, which one would it be?’, and everyone else has to come up with witty answers. If the word is ‘film’, for example, obvious answers are Independence Day or Death Wish, according to taste, though a much funnier one was offered to me by former Tory MP Jerry Hayes: The Italian Job — in which Michael Caine, in the David Cameron role, famously complains ‘You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off’ after a bullion van is accidentally obliterated, and the whole caper ends up hanging over a cliff edge.
At the CBI meeting, Mrs May promised to avoid such cliffhanging, while the corporate lobby group’s chairman Paul Drechsler observed that for many of his members, ‘It’s not about a hard or soft Brexit but a smooth Brexit.’
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in