How to fall in love with a country again

 

Oh, how we whined and whinged when it became apparent that, for a number of reasons, a holiday in the UK was going to have to replace our usual September jaunt to somewhere warm and European. It just wouldn't be the same as lolling by a pool in Corfu wiling away the afternoon with endless gin fizzes or hiring an open top car to explore every corner of Rhodes. Indeed, as we booked rooms in two old hotels at Grange-over-Sands and Peebles, both places where people used to travel in pre-antibiotic days to "take in the air", we resented every penny of the price. We could have a week in Menorca for the same price, dammit. Would it even feel like a holiday if we did all our travelling in the car rather than leaving the trusty Volkswagen at the long-term parking at Gatwick and jumping on a plane?

But as we left the M25 hellscape and hideous traffic around Birmingham behind us, Cumbria hovered into sight and we found our hotel overlooking the Irish Sea at Grange-over-Sands. Sure, it wasn't the most soundproofed of hotels - I am still convinced the couple in the room above us were moving furniture in between acts of copulation - and the breakfast service could have been a bit better organised, but the picture above was the view from our room. When we opened the florid, floral curtains and were greeted by a scene that definitely beat the "sea glimpses" promised on another holiday, there was an overwhelming sense that it was going to be OK.

It was better than OK - work worries were forgotten, we ate, drank and were merry, like all good holidays there was "the incident" (in this case, my sense-of-humour failure after a misreading of Google Maps in the rain in the Lake District), we saw new places and revisited old favourites. When we crossed the border, we had to pre-book our pool time in Peebles, which does kill the spontaneous swim, but we had lovely weather, which is always a bonus on any trip to Scotland. The big coats, packed pessimistically, remained unworn on the back seat of the car.

Of course, no matter where I go, I can't quite divorce myself from politics. After all, I am the nerd who went to Cyprus on holiday and wrote about the tragedy of the abandoned resort of Famagusta, and went to Menorca and ended up writing about feelings of solidarity with the Talayotic people who lived on the Spanish island from about 1400BC until AD1287. 

And so it came to pass that on last week's UK holiday, we could not be unaware of government's ongoing cack-handedness with the coronavirus pandemic. Whether it was loving how the wearing of a mask improved the olfactory experience of using public toilets or wondering how necessary masks were while aboard a boat that was open to the wet and wild elements on our one day of shitty weather, we were conscious of the virus. 

On the way back to London, we stayed with the in-laws in the north-east for a few days, just as the region went back into a partial lockdown - the chat as I got my hair done for a considerably cheaper price than in the capital was of confusion over the latest restrictions, in between utter disdain for Donald Trump ("He's out of his box!") and sympathy for "lovely" Keir Starmer having to self-isolate. North-eastern salon banter never fails to surprise, amuse and delight in equal measure.

In Scotland, we noted the contrast between Peebles and Jedburgh. Peebles was lively, shops were open and busy, there was an air of prosperity, a sense that this historic town was going to be OK no matter what an uncertain future might hold. But Jedburgh, equally bursting with fascinating history and general prettiness, was ultimately a depressing lunch stop - it was hard to find an open cafe for lunch, barely any shops were open, pubs were boarded up, there was neither hustle nor bustle. 

Both towns, along with plenty of places where we stopped in Cumbria, had plenty of signs indicating funding from the European Regional Development Fund - a source of valuable income that has now dried up. These funds are unlikely to be easily replaced, especially as the government's absurd or corrupt attempts to prevent pandemic-related economic disaster drain money away from everything from funding tourism promotion to ensuring the decrepit but clearly once brutally beautiful lido at Grange-over-Sands is properly restored any time soon.

But while I may still be angry about the sorry state of British politics, my anger is tempered with a renewed love for my adopted country and the many lovely people we met along the way. I have a desire for the UK to be the best it can be be - and one thing I do know is that it deserves better than either the elected and utterly risible Johnson government or the hypothetical Corbyn government that was never going to happen because, like it or not, he was never going to resonate with large swathes of voters across the places I visited and revisited on what was a truly wonderful holiday.   

Moving on from Cummings going to Durham with the Dompologists

The Dompologists came out in force as soon as their hero was busted. Apparently, Dominic Cummings going to work on what should have been his first day at home for a 14-day quarantine; driving 260 miles non-stop to Durham with a child in the car while he and his wife were both possibly contagious so they could be near the person who was their only childcare option; the person who was the only childcare option apparently incapable of travelling alone to London if required; being tragically unable to ask a single friend or family member in London to drop off groceries or medication during quarantine; being unable to pay for a grocery or medication delivery service despite having a pretty good combined household income; driving his child to hospital in Durham with his wife while still possibly contagious; driving to Barnard Castle on his wife's birthday with his wife and child in the car on a 60-mile round trip to test his eyesight; not sharing the drive home with his wife even though she can drive; his wife writing a column for the Spectator about life in lockdown which omitted the salient fact that they'd buggered off to Durham; testing the capacity of a Range Rover petrol tank to its absolute running-on-fumes limits; being the parents of a four-year-old with a cast iron bladder; and retrospectively editing a blog post in April 2020 to give the impression that he warned everyone about the coronavirus last year - all mean that he didn't break any of the rules he helped to set and therefore he shouldn't resign.

Instead, a pathetic rebranding of Dominic Cummings, father of the year, erupted. It was quickly pointed out that the whole "he did what any good dad would do" line insulted everyone, especially those struggling to juggle kids and work, and all who had followed the rules since March.

So, the Dompologists started yelling: "LET'S MOVE ON AND TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANT ISSUES!".

OK. Sure. Fine by me. Let's talk about the important issues. How about we start with childcare? Seriously, I've never heard so many people who have never previously breathed a word about childcare talk so much about childcare when they leapt to Cummings' defence.

Let's talk about childcare not just for now - although that is important - but for the long-term. What can we do about (mostly) women giving up careers because childcare costs meant they were literally paying to go to work? What about incentivising employers to subsidise childcare, offer more flexible hours or working-from-home opportunities to help families? Hell, if anything good can come of this wretched virus, it might be the penny dropping for presenteeism-obsessed employers in regard to trusting staff to work from home. At the same time, though, how about recognising the need for people who work from home to have access to childcare? And what about affordable, high-quality childcare for people on low incomes? Maybe some of the Conservative MPs who smashed the red wall could raise this issue on behalf of their working class constituents?

Perhaps the craven cabinet ministers who all spinelessly tweeted embarrassing boilerplate nonsense about Cummings being a plucky little battler who was struggling with childcare could show the same concern for families up and down the country? I could introduce them to someone I know, a single father raising a severely disabled teenaged daughter while working from home. I'm sure that meeting would prove very instructive for the government front bench.

And let's talk about how shamefully outrageous the Downing Street rose garden press conference was. Why was an unelected adviser allowed to use that particular space to defend himself on live TV?

But more importantly, if the Dompologists want to talk about the big issues of the day, let's talk about how Cummings' defence blew wide open the rifts among Brexiters, and how it became painfully clear that the main reason Boris Johnson hasn't sacked him is because he is too scared to try and be prime minister without his trusty adviser.

Cummings came across as being puffed up with his own self-importance during his rose garden statement but he had a point - to Boris Johnson, he is important. Cummings was quite right to talk up his importance to the running of the country - this is the pedestal on which Johnson placed him and now he's incapable of taking him down.

We have a prime minister who is self-serving, unpleasant, cowardly, bullying and lazy. This PM gig has not panned out like he thought it would when it competed for top billing in his masturbatory fantasies at Eton. As a result, he relies heavily on Cummings, having been way too impressed by the effectiveness of the "Take back control" slogan of the Brexit campaign.

Since then, Classic Dom's simplistic slogans have been the order of the day. To be fair, "Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives" was clear and effective. It was an instruction the Cummings himself found impossible to follow but it made sense. Now we have the shitshow of "Stay alert" with a government rushing to ease lockdown rules because public trust has eroded. It seems the government has figured everyone is just going to flock to the nearest park or beach anyway. Bizarre rules about allowing six people in your garden as long as nobody sits on the sunlounger or uses the toilet abound. We're being warned not to have sex with anyone outside our own households but we can let the cleaner, nanny or estate agent in, if required.

Today, we witnessed the Rees-Mogg-inspired farce of MPs queueing in a ridiculous conga line to vote in parliament, along with a drive to force all 650 MPs back into the House of Commons before it's safe to do so, all because the PM is useless without his braying fan club behind him. The pared-back parliament with limited numbers in the house and questions by Zoom exposes Johnson as an incompetent blatherer, a desperate haystack of a man, obviously out of his depth, reaching for Latin Christmas cracker jokes when he has no answers.

Dominic Cummings isn't urging the PM to take a step back and look at this mess with a cool head. He's probably delighted with the chaos - after all, we are edging towards his libertarian wet dream where everyone does the hell they want so they can all be blamed when there's a second spike in COVID-19 cases. And he is happy to continue to lead Boris Johnson down this pitiful path, regardless of whose lives it might cost, along with leading us over an irresponsible no-deal Brexit cliff for good measure. One unelected man has way too much power. That is what has emerged from the scandal over the drive to Durham. That is what is so outrageous and that is why we should stay angry.



Photo: Ninian Reid/Flickr

Britain: the spoiled toddler of Europe

We got home in the early hours of this morning from a brilliant holiday on the Greek island of Rhodes. Everywhere we went, my Australian self and my British husband did not have to trouble ourselves with knowing a word of Greek, apart from "Yamas!" when the beers arrived. 

Waiters, bar tenders, hotel receptionists, hotel cleaners, the woman in the mini market, people urging us to have fish pedicures and walk through a giant lion's mouth to enter a club in Faliraki, the guys who take the money for the sunloungers on the beaches, the cheerful car hire bloke - they all spoke good English. Better than good. Way better than anything I could burp out in Greek. And then you'd see them talk to other people and effortlessly swing from Greek to French to German to Italian and back to English for the monolingual people.

Because that is what Brits (and Australians and Americans...) have come to expect - that everyone will speak English. 

I couldn't sneer at the Greek waiter who said "Lovely jubbly!" as he took our order at a beachside taverna, even though I find Jamie Oliver chronically irritating. After all, he took the time to learn a popular English catchphrase for our benefit. If I was waiting on tables in London and that waiter turned up, I wouldn't be able to muster a single Greek catchphrase to welcome him. I could manage some schoolgirl German, maybe some French and Italian babble that would make me sound like a reject from 'Allo, 'Allo, but I'd be flattering myself if I thought I could hold entire conversations with our nearby neighbours in their own language.

But the cliche of the British tourist expecting to be pandered to, coddled and pampered like an obnoxious toddler is true. You do see British holidaymakers talking loudly and slowly, creating halitosis mirages in the faces of bemused Europeans. It's embarrassing (and I'm only British by presumption and association when I travel with my husband) but it's a microcosm of how Britain expects to be treated by the European Union.  

And we have been treated very well as members of the EU. We are not compelled to have multilingual road signs. Our driving distances are measured in miles, not metric. We can order a pint rather than 568 millilitres of beer. We have kept the pound as our currency rather than adopting the euro. We are not part of the Schengen zone. We have the power to deport Europeans for reasons of security and if they are a burden on the welfare system. We would have had even more rights in terms of deporting EU citizens under the deal David Cameron negotiated before the referendum - if we'd voted to stay in the EU. Ironically, he did a better job of negotiating with the EU than any of the lazy, low-information charlatans who have turned up to Brussels since the referendum still expecting special treatment.

It is pitiful to see Brexiters whine about the EU being mean to them when all they are doing is enforcing what it means to leave the EU. The four freedoms are indivisible - if you voted to leave the EU, you literally voted to give up those freedoms. You can poke your bottom lip out and wobble it all you like, but that is what you did. At least have the courage and awareness to own your shit.

If we do end up leaving the EU on October 31, we don't yet know the level of chaos that will ensue. Only a masochist would want things to go badly. But there are some things that will become more difficult, things that many of us haven't even considered. There are no cheaper, smoother alternatives for British companies who benefit from supply chains through Europe - and this is not just for exporting to the EU. Anyone with a map of the world can see that the port of Antwerp offers an easy route to Africa, for example. 

There is a world of crap facing the travel industry too. Trust me, I report on it for a living. Bus drivers who drive in Europe will need EU-approved certificates of professional competence as UK certificates would become invalid in a no-deal Brexit. Insolvency protection for UK retailers selling to EU customers and vice versa will become way more complicated, such as those who sell travel products. UK travel companies will need to take out insolvency protection for each EU market into which they sell. EU-based tour operators will need to be ATOL members. UK travel agents will need proof that non-UK organisations they work with comply with separate UK regulations.

But supply chains and ease of working for bus drivers and insolvency protection for the travel industry and Antwerp - that's all boring, right? If anyone read the paragraph above in its entirety, I'd be stunned. Here's the link to a story I wrote on it if you can be arsed.

No matter what I write, there are still plenty of people who are fetishising any possible hardships, spouting tedious bumper sticker slogans about how we survived two world wars and we just need to invoke the Blitz spirit. Except WWII ended 74 years ago. People who have never fired a shot in defence of anything are carrying on as if they were there, underneath Luftwaffe bombs and enduring rationing. It was a bloody awful time. 

We survived? My arse, we did. We didn't have to do anything because most of us weren't yet born or we were too young to really remember - and for that we should be grateful for the generations before us. But in the online peanut galleries, it is the Brexiters who are claiming a monopoly on respecting the sacrifices of our largely long-dead soldiers. That's bullshit.

The desire in particular to see young people suffer post-Brexit is particularly vile. When did people stop wanting the next generation to have a better, easier life?  My grandfather, who saw the horrors of WWII up close in Papua New Guinea and Japan, was always grateful that his son and daughter and my sister and I did not have to go to war. He did not want us to see what he saw and he did not want our young adulthoods blighted by war and suffering because he was decent and rational.

And as the days grind on, ever closer to October 31, it's obvious Boris Johnson, our wretched joke of a prime minister, has nothing to offer. He has no real desire or ability to negotiate anything with the EU. All he has is meaningless arse-waffle about "believing" and "getting on with it" and "clean breaks". It's the Brexiters who are all about the feelz, even when the attempts by the government to negotiate a deal that won't damage the economy collide with reality and dissipate into a fine powder of delusion.  

This country is behaving like a spoiled toddler. I hope we're not the poorer for it. If the Brexiters prove me wrong, fine. So be it. But spare me the WWII analogies - they're historically ignorant and you're embarrassing yourself like a prime minister who runs away from a bunch of middle-aged protestors in Luxembourg.

   

Photography by Eyesplash/Flickr

Of dead cats and trial balloons...

Dead cat: Apparently coined by political strategist, Lynton Crosby, it is something said or done to draw attention away from unpleasant news.

Trial balloon: A project, scheme or idea that is tentatively announced to test the reaction. 

There is nothing particularly new about dead cats or trial balloons, but in the last few months, we've had enough dead cats dropped on us to fill a Stephen King novel and the sky is so full of trial balloons, everyone has received an online petition about it from Greenpeace.

Basically, the government wants to know how far it can go, exactly how strong is our appetite for assorted populist, right-leaning policies and how loud and effective are the dissenters. And when something awful is happening, a diversion will be created.

The two most obvious trial balloons of recent months were flown by the chronically misnamed Centre for Social Justice,

A think-tank, led by Iain Duncan Smith, floated the idea of increasing the age when the state pension can be accessed, to 75. The CSJ put the proposal forward and it wasn't long before it was howled down by many. It was a bold move for a conservative think-tank led by a Tory politician, considering the reliance by the Conservative Party on older voters.

IDS himself spluttered out a tweet which made a valiant attempt to put a positive spin on a policy that would make many a tired, overworked voter furious:

"Removing barriers for older people to working longer has the potential to improve health and wellbeing, increase retirement savings and ensure the full functioning of public services for all."

Never mind that this policy would lead to many people placing further strain on public services, such as the NHS, because they've worked long after their bodies have started begging for a rest. As if he cares about that - it's all about saving money on the state pension, the biggest proportion of the welfare bill.

A 75 retirement age was never government policy and may never happen, but the reaction to the balloon was probably very instructive for the government.

The other trial balloon from the CSJ was to urge Home Secretary Priti Patel to make the minimum wage for visa applicants £36,700, effectively eliminating people from coming to work in the UK in most nursing, teaching, hospitality and aged care jobs. Despite the obvious labour shortages that such a policy would create pretty quickly, particularly with an ageing population (but, hey, maybe we can look forward to a country where the average care home worker is over 70...), this idea seemed to be a bit more popular, particularly with anti-immigration voters who are being courted by the Conservative Party, lest the Brexit Party parks too many more tanks on the manicured Tory lawns. 

I'm sure it has given Priti Patel much food for thought - and I wouldn't be surprised if she finds it rather tasty indeed.

Of course, both trial balloons caused insta-outrage across social media, even though neither was actually government policy. That said, awful ideas should be challenged loudly because complacent acceptance can be taken as consent.

Meanwhile, dead cats have been distracting us particularly in recent times. The two most obvious dead cats are the ridiculous Jacob Rees-Mogg issuing a ridiculous style guide for his staff to use in written correspondence, and Boris Johnson absurdly claiming he paints wooden buses as a hobby.

While the country was generally united in saying "What a dickhead!" in regard to the Rees-Mogg style guide, Boris Johnson was getting his arse handed to him in Brussels over his delusional rhetoric about negotiating a whole new deal before Halloween. It was probably around then that he realised he had all the negotiating power of a kitten trying to wrest a zebra steak off a lion and started investigating proroguing parliament - or asking Dominic Cummings to look into it for him, because Johnson is essentially a lazy bugger. Negotiation has never been his strong suit.

And Johnson's own dead cat - the admission that he makes model buses from old wine crates for fun - was possibly a work of evil genius. Anyone who seriously thinks Boris Johnson paints model buses in between his busy schedule of shagging, abusing exclamation marks in official letters, farting, spilling red wine on sofas and bellowing bumper sticker slogans instead of answering journalists' questions properly, is either naive or stupid. There is a theory that he was advised, possibly by a digitally savvy member of his team, to confess to this dorky hobby so that whenever someone Googles something like "Boris Johnson bus", the demonstrably dishonest red bus of the EU referendum campaign drops off the search engine's top results. 

Sure enough, I just Googled "Boris Johnson bus" and the first page spat out three model bus stories and three videos on this story at the top. The image search results still lead with Johnson standing in front of the bus promising an extra £350 million a week to the NHS if we leave the EU, but the search results are certainly less embarrassing than they were before that story broke.

As a bonus for Boris Johnson, while everyone was saying: "Model buses? Really?", the heat died down around the story about his row with girlfriend Carrie Symonds, in which the police were called to her flat. 

Johnson is not afraid to look silly. Indeed, his ludicrous persona has helped him get so far with minimal challenge, so pretending to make buses from wine crates is a minor example of buffoonery compared to his litany of contrived wackiness. His whole manufactured eccentric schtick is possibly the biggest dead cat of them all.

And the biggest trial balloon of them all? The one that could rival the movie Up for its house-lifting properties? Proroguing parliament, of course. This is a classic example of Johnson, with the able assistance of Cummings, seeing what they can get away with. It was so easy. He knew the Queen was not going to tell him to fuck off. 

A much-longer-than-average prorogation of five weeks may only mean a few less sitting days in the House of Commons, because of the party conference recess, but for Johnson, it reduces the time for proper parliamentary debate, and further scrutiny is shut down as the House of Lords and all select committees must close under prorogation. This is sinister. If Theresa May tried to do this to force the passing of her EU deal, there would be outrage across the political spectrum, no doubt with plenty of sexist abuse thrown in for good measure. If a Labour government pulled this stunt, the accusations of Stalinist tactics would fly thick and fast.

But already Brexiters are accusing remainers of panicking over a little shut-down and gleefully celebrating the fact that the prorogation makes a no-deal Brexit on October 31 more likely. The trial balloon is having the desired effect. Dominic Cummings is playing a blinder and we'll probably all be poorer for it.

When the news became a great big trigger warning...

The news cycle since last Thursday has been more unedifying than usual. Perhaps it is naive to expect that people would largely agree that the correct way to deal with a peaceful protester at an elite dinner is not to push her into a pillar and frogmarch her out, grabbing the back of her neck. And perhaps it is naive to expect that if a couple is having an argument so loud it can be heard in the street as well as in neighbouring flats, a reasonable response would be to knock on the door to see if everyone is OK and, if there is no response, call the police.

Yet here we are, arguing all over the internet about all this. I can only imagine how horrific it must be for so many women who have been victims of physical violence or domestic abuse, which can be physical, emotional, verbal or psychological - or an awful combination of these types.

On Thursday night, Janet Barker, a Greenpeace campaigner, along with a group of fellow activists, managed to barge into the Mansion House dinner just as Chancellor Phillip Hammond was about to give his speech. She was dressed in a red cocktail dress and heels, she carried a small bag, a phone and a bundle of leaflets, and she wore a Greenpeace sash. Her fellow protestors were similarly dressed - red cocktail dresses and sashes for the women and tuxedos for the men - and the obvious question is how did they get as far into the building as they did? It is astounding in these paranoid times, that they were not stopped at the entrance, bags X-rayed and leaflets inspected. I've been to events at the Houses of Parliament and Portcullis House and the security was on par with catching a plane.

But get into the dinner they did. And when Janet Barker walked towards the front of the room, Mark Field MP took it upon himself to stop her - which would have been fine if he'd handled it almost any other way other than the way he did. 

He could have been a true class act and defender of free speech by stopping her, asking her to tell the room why she was there, and then handed her leaflets around the room. Or he could have steered her away by the arm rather than push her into a pillar and grab her by the scruff of the neck, his face magenta with instant rage.

For so many women who have been attacked in that manner, whether in public or private, the endless repetition of the footage for a solid two days cannot have been easy. The pushing into a wall, the grabbing of the neck, instantly weakening defences - it's appallingly familiar for too many. It gave me a brief flashback to the time I was pulled off a footpath in Dubai and pushed into a bush in an attempted sexual assault. And I managed to get away, albeit with laddered tights and a scratch on my chest. I can only imagine how much worse this footage would be for women who have suffered worse violence at the hands of men, especially over a sustained period of time.

Field's defence was that he "acted on instinct" but if that was his instinct, he really does need to take some time away to reflect as to why his immediate reaction was rage and excessive manhandling of a woman who was clearly representing a group known for peaceful protest. Please note that "peaceful" in this context means "non-violent", not "quiet" or "non-disruptive". The Greenpeace protesters who woke me up one morning in Durban in 2011 to protest a gas industry event in my hotel made a racket but nobody was in any danger. They were allowed to sing, bang drums in the street and chant unimpeded. One activist managed to get into the hotel business centre and change the wallpaper on the computers to the Greenpeace logo. There was no harm done. I giggled to myself when I went to the business centre to write up my notes from the gas event on one of the altered PCs - it was excellent mischief.

And nobody was in any real danger last Thursday night. 

Nobody else at the dinner felt the need to react so disproportionately. Plenty of people who were at the Mansion House dinner were at the Conservative Party conference of 2017 when Simon Brodkin, a "prankster" (read: overgrown schoolboy who is about as funny as burning orphans), barged in and handed Theresa May a P45. On that occasion, no male MPs felt the need to be a Billy Big-Balls hero and push Brodkin into the wall or frogmarch him out by scruff of the neck, Theresa May was the very model of British good manners when she took the P45 form in the same way that many a Brit is too polite not to take a leaflet from someone at the tube station, and the security guard who escorted Brodkin out did so with a single, gentle hand to the back.

Following on from the usual suspects defending Mark Field, news broke of a noisy row at Carrie Symonds' flat, which would not be newsworthy except the argument was with her partner, one Boris Johnson, the man most likely to be the next prime minister. He has been staying there after his second marriage broke up. God forbid he rent a place in Uxbridge, his actual constituency, but that would require him to show some sort of commitment to his job as an MP.

But I digress. As with any argument between a couple, only the couple knows the full story, but we do know this argument was loud enough to be heard on the street and through walls, Ms Symonds was heard saying "get off me" and "get out of my flat", Mr Johnson was heard saying "get off my fucking laptop" and smashing sounds were heard. It's the kind of language and sounds that are familiar to many a victim of domestic violence.

The ethics of the neighbours giving a recording of the altercation to the Guardian newspaper is being furiously debated - along with the ethics of other newspapers making hay from it all while spouting fauxrage at the neighbours who recorded the argument and claiming Ms Symonds is "furious" based on what "friends" have apparently said, rather than anything she has directly told a journalist. There is definitely an intelligent debate to be had about media ethics here, especially in regard to whether this endangers Ms Symonds' safety. The Daily Mail, in particular, should remove from its website a diagram of the apartment building, including a floorplan of Ms Symonds' flat - that invasive crap goes way beyond the public interest defence.

However, it is stunning that anyone says the police should not have been called. The ire has been directed at "nosy neighbours" and their own politics have been thoroughly dissected in today's papers. But in this sort of situation, where an argument can be easily heard outside a flat, where it sounds as if there are people in distress and possibly in physical danger, calling police is absolutely the right thing to do.

It is pretty common for police to arrive only to be told everything is fine, but there are plenty of occasions where the arrival of the police has saved someone's life or is the turning point for an abused partner to leave a dangerous relationship. In the wake of the Johnson-Symonds row, people have spoken up about how they were grateful for the neighbours who called the police, or how they would have left an abusive relationship sooner if the police were called earlier or, tragically, how people were left badly injured or killed because nobody picked up the phone.

I have been the "nosy neighbour". In 2005, I called the police multiple times on the couple in the flat across the hall from me in Sydney. They were drug addicts who would have noisy and violent fights that would spill out of their place and carry on outside the door to my flat, usually in the middle of the night. This went on for months. On one occasion, after I knocked on their door telling them to be quiet because I was trying to sleep, the woman bashed on my door when I was back in bed, yelling that she would "kick my cunt in". Then there was the day when I burst into tears at my desk, crying frustrated tears of distress and exhaustion because I was too sleep-deprived to do my job properly.

That story did not end happily. The parents of the woman called me, desperate for information about their daughter, particularly as they were caring for her child from a previous relationship. One night, the woman knocked on my door to tell me she was pregnant and too scared to tell her boyfriend - I told her she would have to start taking better care of herself if she was serious about continuing the pregnancy and that she should end the relationship. I let her know that her parents were very worried and would take her in. She told me it was too hard to leave him and scuttled back to her flat. The good news is that ultimately she did leave the toxic relationship, but not long afterwards, her boyfriend committed suicide in the flat - by this time I'd moved to Dubai and a friend who lived upstairs told me the sad, sorry story.

I don't regret calling the police. The police officers' interventions could have defused life-endangering situations, even if they always sent the police away and said they were fine. Calling the police several times was still the right thing to do. And it is the right thing to do, regardless of whether the couple is a wretched pair of drug addicts or a privileged couple who are on the verge of being the most powerful twosome in the country.

The more we argue about the morality pushing women into walls and grabbing their necks or whether we should call the police if we overhear a nasty argument, the less safe women will be. Why the hell is anyone who professes to be decent tolerating this?

Photography by George Hodan

What's a remainiac to do?

At the time of writing, the dreadful but effective Brexit Party was polling at  around 31%, incoherent Labour at 23%, resurgent Lib Dems at 16%, hapless Tories at 9%, the possible-surprise-package Greens at 9%, the dismal Change UK at 4% and the busted flush that is UKIP a puny 2%.

So, we have with Brexit and UKIP, two definite, unambiguous we-want-Brexit at all costs taking up 33% of the votes.

The other 67% features the unambiguous pro-remain/pro-people's vote/pro-revoke Article 50 parties at 29%. But here's the bit that's harder to quantify - who is pro-remain among those who still plan to vote for one of two increasingly pathetic major parties?

Among the 23% for Labour, there is a strong pro-remain component - there are still plenty of people, and not just Labour MEPs, who are pushing the line that a vote for Labour is a vote for a second vote and the best way to quell the charge of the Brexit Party in Brussels. And there are pro-remain Conservatives who may well be resigned to the fact that Theresa May's Brexit deal is as good as it will get for the UK outside the EU, but would open a quiet bottle of champagne if this whole Brexit shit-show was called off.

Those who are pro-remain probably add up to quite a bit more than the 33% Brexit/UKIP conglomerate. A Survation poll from May 17 revealed 51% support for remaining in the EU. This same poll found 68% of Labour voters and 47% of Conservative voters support remaining.

Obviously, we all know we can't put blind faith in polls but with around 67% of voters apparently not interested in either of the hardline Brexit parties, it would appear there is no appetite for a hard Brexit and possibly a diminishing appetite for any Brexit at all.

Thursday's European election will, most likely, be a protest vote for most people. If we leave the EU, as planned, on the new deadline of October 31, our latest batch of MEPs will only represent us for a few months. But for almost all of us, whether we're remainers or leavers, Thursday's vote is a chance for us to be heard. There is a lot of impotent rage right now. It has to come out somewhere and I'd rather it came out in the ballot box than on in riots on the streets.

For pro-remain voters - and I make no secret of being one of these people - it's a frustrating time. We don't want to see Nigel Farage emboldened any more. We look at him and his diabolical collection of candidates in utter despair. Ann Widdecombe hates women so much that she changed religion when the Church of England started ordaining us as vicars and, despite professing to be a Christian, she has no issue with pregnant women giving birth in shackles. Claire Fox takes a deliberately contrarian view on child pornography which is so awful that it's unclear whether she genuinely believes children would not be traumatised if they had to participate in simulated sex for the purposes of gratifying absolute sickos or she is just trolling for attention. Annunziata Rees-Mogg has had a long career writing articles about how to get rich off other people's misery. Lucy Harris has cheerfully said we'll just have to deal with 30 years of economic hardship as a price worth paying for Brexit.

To these awful charlatans, along with Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, Brexit hardships and job losses are for the little people. If you genuinely believe any of these people give a damn about you, I have a box of fishnet condoms in the boot of my car to sell you.

But it's too easy for me to sit here and slag off these people. I could sit her all night pulling them apart forensically but it's not going to make a difference. It won't change minds. It won't win hearts. If anything, every time a milkshake is thrown, it strengthens the resolve of the "LEAVE MEANS LEAVE!" crowd.

My fellow remainers and I should be pushing a positive case for remaining in the EU. This should have been the case back in 2016. There are so many benefits we will lose, many of which have not occurred to most people, particularly in the event of a disastrous no-deal Brexit.

International Development Secretary Rory Stewart was seen the other day quite rightly pointing out that a no-deal Brexit is not a destination -  it is stunning that he is not seen as a more serious leadership contender than Boris bloody Johnson among Tory members, but I digress. A no-deal crash-out is a starting point for a long, onerous process of negotiating with the EU, and with the rest of the world without the support of the EU. The inevitable outcome will be a deal with the EU that is not much different to Theresa May's deal, only it will leave the UK in an even weaker position. It will probably break up the UK.

A no deal Brexit is not a lark. It is not something to be flippant about. We will be the only country in the world trading under WTO rules for God-knows-how-long now that Mauritania is no longer solely trading this way. Surprise, surprise, this is because Mauritania is seeking to trade freely and closely with geographical neighbours in northern and western Africa and as part of the ever-closer African Union. Mauritania's example reflects a positive case for being part of close economic and free trade unions with the countries closest to your shores.

But none of this is being distilled by one pro-remain party that remainers can all galvanise around. Instead, our votes will be cast in different directions - there is certainly a strong groundswell of support for the Liberal Democrats, whether those who are voting yellow with a clothes peg on their nose or they are simply energised by the #BollocksToBrexit slogan. And I predict the Greens will do better than expected on Thursday.

As for Change UK, it has scooped up plenty of smart people who have, it now appears, thrown their political careers on a bonfire. It's a shame - it could have been so good. There was a frisson of hope and energy when people started defecting from the Labour and Conservative benches. A lot of we remainers really wanted it to be good - like a new Amy Pohler movie. But it has not been good. Not even the logo is good. The black lines on a white background look like a flag to wave while opposing gay rights, which I am guessing is not the vibe they were going for. And the message about changing politics has been swept up in a tidal wave of critics yelling that the party is all about preserving the status quo rather than changing a damn thing.

That's the problem with pro-remain messaging. Few of us think the EU is perfect but we do believe the benefits are still immense, that we should stay in, retain our influence in the world, play our role in reforming the EU where required, emphasising how we are made stronger by the four freedoms, and not see a diminished UK make desperate trade deals with the US, Russia and China. It's just that it's bloody hard to encapsulate this complex and nuanced message on a bumper sticker, bus or billboard.

On the other side of the fence, the simple soundbites such as "take back control", "leave means leave, "let's go WTO" and "no deal, no problem" have cut though the noise. And remainers, all of us, may have left it too late to fight back with better arguments, with positivity and at the ballot box.

The form guide of the damned... Runners and riders for our next PM

Theresa May is a dead woman walking, although her cadaverous prime ministerial form has managed to stagger on for longer than many expected. But she will not be the PM to contest the next election, which will presumably be against Jeremy Corbyn, unless he is, I dunno, caught interfering with barnyard fowl in the speaker's chair or something. 

As such, the country is witnessing the unedifying spectacle of assorted Tory MPs on leadership campaign manouevres that are as subtle as Liberace's bathroom - Poundland Machiavellians, the whole sorry lot of them. How about on this Grand National weekend we take a stroll through the terrible contenders who might replace the terrible incumbent, shall we? None of them are likely to get shot if they break a leg but, rest assured, they are all more concerned with not breaking the Conservative Party than they are about not breaking the country.

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson is the man who wasted money while Mayor of London on everything from a cable car that is used most days by approximately three people and a Basset hound called Trevor to secondhand water cannon that ended up being sold for scrap for £11,000 to a £1.4 million fiasco in which he thought gluing pollution to the road might help London meet, funnily enough, EU air quality standards. Boris Johnson is the man who is originally responsible for people whining about Europe because of supposed regulations about things like the shape of strawberries and the bendiness of bananas, after he got bored while play-acting at being an EU correspondent for the Telegraph and simply made shit up. Boris Johnson is the man who played no small role in ensuring Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe won't get out of an Iranian prison any time soon. Boris Johnson is the man who buggered off to Afghanistan at our expense to avoid facing an embarrassing vote on the expansion of Heathrow Airport. 

Boris Johnson is an irresponsible, verbally incontinent, principle-free, contrived, self-serving pedlar of clown car fuel. As such, he should not be anywhere near 10 Downing Street, yet William Hill has the odds of him being next PM at 9/2. 

Dominic Raab

In these absurd times, it is absolutely fine that this glorified nightclub bouncer with an amoeba's grasp of European geography should be considered a serious contender for the highest political office in the land. 

He said, out loud, in a public forum, where other people could hear him, that he "hadn't quite understood the full of extent of this, but if you look at the UK and if you look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing."

Despite this blinding flash of clarity about why it might be important to ensure trade remains seamless with our nearest neighbours, Raab insists on styling himself as Mr Hard Brexit. Sure, he, along with Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, were the trio of self-interested flakes who suddenly decided Theresa May's rancid Brexit deal was alright after all, but he still likes to come across as some kind of Brexit enforcer. This is despite resigning from the post of Brexit minister over work he'd done himself during his ill-starred tenure, claiming as recently as March 21 that a no-deal Brexit will be just dandy - and, scandalously, admitting that he had not properly read the Good Friday agreement. Never mind that reading the Good Friday agreement from cover to cover should be a bare minimum requirement for anyone who thinks they can sort this shitshow out. 

Here's a crib note, Dom - Strand 3 is the bit that you really need to read to understand why a hard Brexit with a hard Irish border could see a return to the violence that had been left behind 21 years ago. But rather like Johnson, Raab doesn't do details either. 

Sajid Javid

All hail The Saj! For that is how he refers to himself, apparently - and who doesn't want a bellend who refers to himself in the third person for PM, eh?

So far, as Home Secretary, he is proving remarkably bold. Stripping Shamima Begum of her citizenship was clearly a populist move - it won't do a damn thing to keep the UK safe but it plays well to his crowd. And it appears that his crowd are UKIP types who are desperate to appear progressive in a reductive "some of my best friends are Asian" kind of way. 

Today, he is happily riding out the remainer outcry about the words "European Union" being removed from British passports, even though we're still in the EU. He says it's simply more efficient to take these words off the front of passports now, even though that explanation makes precisely no sense.

Last week, he loyally joined forces with Theresa May to urge hospital staff and teachers to spot young people who might be at risk of being involved in knife crime. Unsurprisingly, there does not appear to be any evidence of extra funding for this plan - no mention of when already-overworked NHS and teaching staff will be trained to spot the signs, whatever they may be, or how such training will be funded, or who would conduct the training (probably G4S after the bang-up job they did with Olympic security...), or whether more staff would be employed in hospitals and schools to help with this new addition to everyone's job description, or what sort of protection might be on offer for hospital and school staff who report on such young people and find themselves on the receiving end of threats themselves. Nope. It's just another pie-in-the-sky idea with no real money attached to it, and it will be as effective as a fishnet condom.

But, like Johnson and Raab, The Saj is another one who does not feel the need to do details. Which brings us nicely to... 

Michael Gove

In the Govester's defence, he was quoted out of context when he said people were "tired of experts". He actually said: "I think people in this country have had enough of experts ... with organisations with acronyms saying they know what is best and consistently getting it wrong." 

To be fair, there is a grown-up conversation to be had around this idea but, just as we are no longer in an era where potential PMs need to be at all details-oriented, we are in the era of bumper sticker politics. It is cheap soundbites that win the day. While it was easy to be outraged at Michael Gove saying we've all had enough of experts, it was a soundbite that played well with the leave voters who are perceived by all these runners and riders to be the people they need to stay in power. 

And with Gove, we have another one who breezes through scandals with effortless ease. He has brushed off questions about whether he was aware of any illegalities in the Vote Leave campaign by simply saying he had no idea because he was too busy campaigning in the lead-up to the referendum. Still, he was only the co-convener of Vote Leave so it's not as if he was involved with any of the major campaign decisions. 

So, in this case, we have someone who probably does do details and may well have been aware of certain unsavoury goings-on, but in this case, it serves him well to bat off any hard questions from journalists by portraying himself as a hardy little Brexit foot soldier, out there on the campaign trail back in 2016, not really having any time to be aware of any irregularities. Details, like any fallout from a hard Brexit, are for the little people. Someone else can worry about those piffling trifles.

Andrea Leadsom

Oh good! At last! We have a woman in the running to be the next PM! Oh shit. It's Andrea Leadsom. This is the woman who made people defend Theresa May after Leadsom made appalling comments about May's childlessness last time she aspired to the top job. It was a nasty, unnecessary cheap shot, particularly as (a) there are plenty of good reasons to criticise Theresa May no matter what side of the political fence you sit on and (b) nobody ever starts wondering out loud about whether a man's fatherhood status is relevant to his ability to do pretty much any job.

Thanks to crap from the likes of Leadsom, women really can't win - we're either being told that we're bad employees because we'll all sod off to have babies and then want silly things like maternity leave and affordable childcare or we're told that if we don't breed, we've somehow failed as women. With this in mind, not to mention her hateful voting record, it's quite clear that a Leadsom government would not be a feminist statement. Still, that's probably not her demographic either so why would she care?

It is pretty clear that a Leadsom government, just like the government of any of these contenders, would look to things like further NHS privatisation and a one-sided trade deal with the US, particularly in the event of a hard Brexit, which she favours with almost religious fervour. 

Jeremy Hunt

It is not exactly a state secret that any of these contenders are more concerned with their own careers and with the survival of the Conservative Party than doing what is best for Britain. But of these craven cynics, it is Hunt's mask that fell the hardest. 

He appeared on Marr last month and said that it would be "devastating" for the Conservative Party if Brexit wasn't delivered. He doubled down on this astounding rhetoric by saying his party was in "perilous waters" and that the Conservative Party would be blamed if the UK didn't leave the EU. To which anyone who gives a damn about the national interest should say "So bloody what?". 

Of course, it is naive to suggest that either major party is absolutely devoted to serving the people of this country and that nobody is obsessed by getting into power - it is what they all want - but for it to be said so brazenly was a new low, even for Jeremy Hunt. He was Britain's longest-serving Health Secretary and, on his watch, A&E waiting times went up, funding in real terms went down and junior doctors went on strike. I'm not sure what one expected when a failed marmalade mogul was given this job rather than, say, an expert. 

Like Johnson, Hunt has flip-flopped on Brexit, campaigning for remain and now trying to out-UKIP UKIP in his quest to fly the flag for a hard Brexit while simultaneously staying loyal to Theresa May's Brexit deal. Like Johnson, he is not a conviction politician. He is a snake in the grass but he is not bright enough to be truly sly. Like Johnson and Raab, it is a mystery why he is considered a serious contender for Prime Minister or why his message, whatever the hell it is, would resonate with anyone.

Matthew Hancock

Who? Oh yes, that's right, the talking potato who is the Health Secretary... Nope, again no idea why he thought he had anywhere near enough runs on the board to make a serious bid for the Tory party leadership. Next! 

Ian Duncan-Smith

Oh Christ, not him again... He already had a go at leading the Tories between 2001 and 2003 and look how well that went. To paraphrase former Australian PM Paul Keating, when asked about the resurrection of the political career of one of his rivals, Andrew Peacock, is IDS another souffle who could rise twice? Next!

Jacob Rees-Mogg

Et sanguinem infernum, as Rees-Mogg himself might say... He is another one, like Johnson, who puts on a ridiculous persona to ensure he gets a leave pass no matter how awful he might be. Last week, he was lumbering about, moping like a gothic Eeyore, as reporters asked him if he was going to try and convince other MPs to support Theresa May's deal, after he finally voted for it as "the least worst option". He looked like a man who had no real zeal for pushing for a hard Brexit. In any case, he is so wealthy that it doesn't matter how things pan out - it's not as if his six kids will go without shoes any time soon. 

I predict that, assuming the next Tory party leader is a Brexiter, Rees-Mogg will get a nice cabinet post. For all the talk of him being the next PM, William Hill only has him as a 50/1 chance. But, hey, if you think a man who has let his religious beliefs interfere with his parliamentary votes on abortion and same-sex marriage should be in charge, knock yourself out! I'm jetlagged, I need pasta and I'm overwhelmed by the state of it all. Don't even get me started on some of the absolute melts on the other side of the house...

Image by Karen Arnold

Tony Abbott's Brexit blather unpicked

Tony Abbott, former Prime Minister of Australia, well-known misogynist, homophobe and climate change denier, stuck his head over the parapet on Brexit and his Spectator article keeps doing the rounds online. It's tiresome and ridiculous so I thought I'd break it down. Just to be clear, to quote the hapless Theresa May, Tony's words are in black and my words are in red.

It’s pretty hard for Britain’s friends, here in Australia, to make sense of the mess that’s being made of Brexit. The referendum result was perhaps the biggest-ever vote of confidence in the United Kingdom, its past and its future. 

OK, Tony, I'll stop you there already. Sure, people in other countries are baffled by Brexit for a wide range of reasons but it's the bit about the vote being a vote of confidence in the past that is especially pitiful. It is about nostalgia for "good old days" that weren't that good at all - it is a hankering for a time when the UK was known as "the sick man of Europe", when manufacturing was in a terrible place, when GDP lagged dramatically behind those of Germany, France and Italy, and trade with European partners was constipated. But you know what reversed all those trends? Joining the EEC and then the EU!   

But the British establishment doesn’t seem to share that confidence and instead looks desperate to cut a deal, even if that means staying under the rule of Brussels. Looking at this from abroad, it’s baffling: the country that did the most to bring democracy into the modern world might yet throw away the chance to take charge of its own destiny.

Oh, please. Enough with the "British establishment" - the loudest pro-Brexit voices such as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg are the very definition of the establishment. It is a campaign that has largely been led by a moneyed elite who will be largely unaffected by a catastrophic Brexit, probably never expected the Leave vote to win and, as such, had no interest in taking responsibility for the outcome or doing the serious, intellectually and economically rigorous work required to not make Brexit the car crash we are now witnessing.

And the "under the rule of Brussels" rhetoric is Daily Express-in-bumper-sticker nonsense which ignores the fact that we have elected MEPs and the power of veto as EU members. Sadly, the work of MEPs has been pitifully under-reported over the years or deliberately mis-reported, particularly by Boris Johnson when he was play-acting at journalism as an EU correspondent. And when I say "mis-reported", I mean "made shit up".

Let’s get one thing straight: a negotiation that you’re not prepared to walk away from is not a negotiation — it’s surrender. It’s all give and no get. When David Cameron tried to renegotiate Britain’s EU membership, he was sent packing because Brussels judged (rightly) that he’d never actually back leaving. And since then, Brussels has made no real concessions to Theresa May because it judges (rightly, it seems) that she’s desperate for whatever deal she can get.

Let's get one thing straight, Tony - David Cameron was frequently terrible, but his negotiations with the EU as Prime Minister gave us the best deal of all EU members.

Here is a helpful list:

1. We have kept our currency. 

2. It was written into EU law that the UK was exempt from any documents referring to an "ever-closer union". 

3. Newly arrived EU citizens are banned from claiming jobseeker's allowance for three months and have to go home if they haven't found a job within six months. 

4. If EU workers lose a job through no fault of their own they are only entitled to jobseeker's allowance and housing benefit for six months. 

5. Access to benefits for newly arrived EU workers was limited for a period of up to four years from the commencement of employment. 

(Newsflash! By a long, long way, the old age pension makes up the biggest proportion of the UK's welfare bill, people born here are more likely to be on benefits than people who have arrived from the EU, and the proportion of people in work who still need welfare to get by keeps rising)

6. As we are outside the eurozone, the UK is not required to fund euro bailouts and will be reimbursed for central EU funds used to prop up the euro.

The EU’s palpable desire to punish Britain for leaving vindicates the Brexit project. Its position, now, is that there’s only one ‘deal’ on offer, whereby the UK retains all of the burdens of EU membership but with no say in setting the rules. The EU seems to think that Britain will go along with this because it’s terrified of no deal. Or, to put it another way, terrified of the prospect of its own independence.

Christ, here we go again with the EU "punishing" the UK for leaving. To enjoy full access to the single market and the benefits of the customs union, we have to abide by certain rules, such as freedom of movement. 

And the pitiful whining about how we will have "no say in setting the rules" needs to stop - if you voted to leave, you voted for the UK to have no MEPs, no representation in any EU institution, and therefore no say in the rules. But we will still have to trade with the EU post-Brexit - even Brexiters realise this - and to do so, our goods and services have to meet certain standards. It's just that we won't have any say in those standards but having no say is literally what you voted for when you wanted to render MEPs unemployed. 

But even after two years of fearmongering and vacillation, it’s not too late for robust leadership to deliver the Brexit that people voted for. It’s time for Britain to announce what it will do if the EU can’t make an acceptable offer by March 29 next year — and how it would handle no deal. 

Sit down, Tony. You're peddling myths again, starting with "if the EU can’t make an acceptable offer by March 29 next year". We're the ones who are leaving, the onus is on us to tell the EU what we want from this brave new post-Brexit world. If our demands are seen by the EU as giving the UK rights over and above EU members, why the hell would the EU say: "OK then, you can leave the EU while still retaining the benefits of membership with none of the responsibilities, you wacky kids!"?

Freed from EU rules, Britain would automatically revert to world trade, using rules agreed by the World Trade Organization. It works pretty well for Australia. So why on earth would it not work just as well for the world’s fifth-largest economy?

Another lie from Tony! But there has been so much utter tripe spouted about the giddy, giddy joy of trading under WTO rules that it comes as no surprise that Tony has glibly said "it works pretty well for Australia". Australia does not trade solely under WTO rules, which would be the default plan if we crash out with no deal. Australia has multiple free trade agreements including those with New Zealand, China, South Korea and the USA, and negotiations have started for an agreement with, you guessed it, the EU. 

The only country in the world that trades pretty much exclusively under WTO rules is Mauritania, a country most people struggle to find on a map (hint: it's in north-west Africa) and is frequently confused with the honeymooners' paradise of Mauritius (hint: the Mauritanian economy does not do well out of tourism, let alone tourism from honeymooners). Mauritania has an economy heavily reliant on agriculture, fisheries and iron ore. While a significant hydrocarbon discovery off its coast, which it shares with Senegal, has the potential to transform Mauritania, this project is still in the very early exploration stages. The Mauritanian economy, as it currently stands, is not one the UK should seek to emulate in a hurry.

In any case, Mauritania, while still being hamstrung by WTO rules, is part of the growing trend across Africa to form economic blocs of neighbouring countries, as well as being part of the African Union. So committed is Mauritania to having a seat at that particular table it hosted an African Union summit in June this year. The EU has been very busy in recent years signing Memoranda of Understanding with blocs across Africa - and these MoUs are a vast improvement on some of the terrible trading arrangements Europe has had with African countries in awful years gone by. The forming of blocs across Africa, as well as a strengthening of the African Union, is helping African trade enormously. Good Lord, it's almost as if forming close economic ties with your nearest geographical neighbours might be useful! Who'd've thunk it? 

A world trade Brexit lets Britain set its own rules. 

No, Tony, it means we will crash out with no deal, endure absolute bedlam across multiple industries and have to trade under the limitations of WTO rules until we get our shit together and sort out trade deals with the 50+ countries with which the EU has trade deals. Surely even you know, Tony, that trade deals aren't sorted out over a cup of tea and a slice of Victoria sponge. They can take years and when we're not negotiating them with the support of our fellow EU members, it won't be as easy. And there is no point trying to make a start on these amazing deals before it's clear what our relationship with the EU will look like - that will influence what sort of hand we will have going into any trade deal negotiation.

It can say, right now, that it will not impose any tariff or quota on European produce and would recognise all EU product standards. That means no border controls for goods coming from Europe to Britain. You don’t need to negotiate this: just do it. If Europe knows what’s in its own best interests, it would fully reciprocate in order to maintain entirely free trade and full mutual recognition of standards right across Europe.

Sure, Tony, we can "just do it" but that won't make negotiating trade arrangements with the 50+ countries we already have deals with as part of the EU any easier. See my previous comment. And see my even earlier comment about how we still won't have any say in standards across Europe if we leave the EU. Bloody hell, I am repeating myself now. It's like dealing with a slow-witted child.

Next, the UK should declare that Europeans already living here should have the right to remain permanently — and, of course, become British citizens if they wish. This should be a unilateral offer. Again, you don’t need a deal. You don’t need Michel Barnier’s permission. If Europe knows what’s best for itself, it would likewise allow Britons to stay where they are.

Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony. This is so naive it's almost adorable. Yes, of course the government could simply guarantee the rights of all EU citizens currently in the UK to stay and become British citizens with those funky red, I mean, blue passports. But, given that the perception and quite possibly the reality is that plenty of people voted leave to reduce the number of Europeans living here, and given that the Conservative Party is still obsessed with pandering to anti-immigration elements, that is not what is actually going on. EU citizens will have to go through the bureaucracy of applying for settled status, if they have lived here for five years, and "pre-settled status" if they have been here for less than five years, at a cost of £65 per adult and £32.50 per child under 16.

Hurrah! More bureaucracy!   

Third, there should continue to be free movement of people from Europe into Britain — but with a few conditions. Only for work, not welfare. And with a foreign worker’s tax on the employer, to make sure anyone coming in would not be displacing British workers.

Tony, see my list above about the limitations of welfare for EU citizens before you start embarrassing yourself any further. 

As for a foreign workers' tax, how exactly will that be enforced? How will employers prove their European employees are not displacing British workers? What if they are forced to sack European workers and they can't find British workers to fill the positions? Will those companies be compensated or just taxed into oblivion? That doesn't sound conducive to economic growth. I thought you were a low-tax, limited government conservative, Tony, yet here you are proposing a new tax that would potentially damage businesses and create additional administration for an already stretched civil service.

Hurrah! More bureaucracy! And a fun new tax!

Fourth, no ‘divorce bill’ whatsoever should be paid to Brussels. The UK government would assume the EU’s property and liabilities in Britain, and the EU would assume Britain’s share of these in Europe. If Britain was getting its fair share, these would balance out; and if Britain wasn’t getting its fair share, it’s the EU that should be paying Britain.

Sigh... Here we go again with the "let's just bugger off into WTO wonderland without paying a penny" claptrap. The "divorce bill" is not a fine for leaving the EU - it is about meeting financial obligations in a responsible manner. If we leave without paying the bill like an indignant diner who is angry with the restaurant because they don't like the colour of the tiles in the loo, that will not help our international standing, particularly when it comes to negotiating future trade deals outside the EU. It's going to be hard enough to negotiate 50+ trade deals without the support of our fellow European negotiators without further diminishing our international standing by behaving like petulant toddlers.

Also, spoiler alert, Tony: Britain was getting its fair share from the EU and then some.

Finally, there’s no need on Britain’s part for a hard border with Ireland. Britain wouldn’t be imposing tariffs on European goods, so there’s no money to collect. The UK has exactly the same product standards as the Republic, so let’s not pretend you need to check for problems we all know don’t exist. Some changes may be needed but technology allows for smart borders: there was never any need for a Cold War-style Checkpoint Charlie. Irish citizens, of course, have the right to live and work in the UK in an agreement that long predates EU membership.

The hard border isn't just about tariffs or pre-EU agreements, Tony. It's about inspections of goods as they cross the border once the UK is out of the customs union. Once we are out of the EU, we are out of the customs union - again, this is literally what people voted for when they voted leave so I have no idea why any Brexiter is crying about this. Hell, it's almost as if some people had no idea what they were really voting for, and didn't realise we are facing the prospect of UK trucks held up at every border in the EU for inspection as they try to transport goods easily around the continent, even with "smart borders".

Oh, and there is the not-insignificant issue of a hard border risking reigniting the troubles in Northern Ireland. But don't just take my word for it. Click here to hear from a retired member of the Irish Defence Forces on the risks and woeful lack of preparation on the side of the republic. Combine this with moronic, dismissive rhetoric on Ireland from the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and equally poor preparation for a hard Brexit by the UK and it soon becomes clear that this isn't as simple as just bunging in a few cameras and scanners. 

Of course, the EU might not like this British leap for independence. It might hit out with tariffs and impose burdens on Britain as it does on the US — but WTO rules put a cap on any retaliatory action. The worst it can get? We’re talking levies of an average 4 or 5 per cent. Which would be more than offset by a post-Brexit devaluation of the pound (which would have the added bonus of making British goods more competitive everywhere).

Tony, levies of 4 or 5 per cent add up when we're talking about goods worth millions of pounds. As we face economic uncertainty and ongoing skyrocketing costs just to deal with the bureaucracy of Brexit, additional levies are not going to be helpful. As for the devaluation of the pound, we could always make like Germany and Sweden and ensure we manufacture high quality goods rather than relying on a tanking currency to help exports, but you've always loved simplistic, race-to-the-bottom ideas, haven't you, Tony?

UK officialdom assumes that a deal is vital, which is why so little thought has been put into how Britain might just walk away. Instead, officials have concocted lurid scenarios featuring runs on the pound, gridlock at ports, grounded aircraft, hoarding of medicines and flights of investment. It’s been the pre-referendum Project Fear campaign on steroids. And let’s not forget how employment, investment and economic growth ticked up after the referendum.

Tony, we haven't actually left yet. We still do not know what our relationship with the EU will look like with just 131 days to go until we leave the EU - sure, there was hyperbole about a Brexit armageddon but we won't know for sure how bad it will be until this ongoing saga is resolved. Under every credible economic model, the UK economy will shrink post-Brexit. It's just a matter of how bad the shrinkage will be, something a Prime Minister well-known for appearing in public wearing Speedos after swimming in cold water should know all about.

And the employment figures have been bolstered by the growth in zero-hours contracts, Tony. In Australia, this is known as the casualisation of the workforce - and, no matter what you call it, is is a trend that does work for some workers in certain circumstances but overall, it leads to economic uncertainty and limitations for so many others. 

But you were never one for workers' rights, were you, Tony? That may explain why you didn't weigh into the debate about whether EU workers drive down salaries in the UK - someone might just ask you about endorsing and enforcing a higher minimum wage to make low-skilled jobs more appealing to British workers, which is something which needs to happen at Westminster level, not at EU level, and might make you look a little bit socialist.

As a former prime minister of Australia and a lifelong friend of your country, I would say this: Britain has nothing to lose except the shackles that the EU imposes on it. After the courage shown by its citizens in the referendum, it would be a tragedy if political leaders go wobbly now. Britain’s future has always been global, rather than just with Europe. Like so many of Britain’s admirers, I want to see this great country seize this chance and make the most of it.

Give over, Tony. You're delirious.

Photography by Sittoula (a.k.a. Sitt) Sitlakone/Flickr