Let’s rein in Brexiteer triumphalism before we all go mad

According to archaeologists and all the papers last week, the 11th-century villagers of Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, used to mutilate their dead, chopping off their heads and breaking their legs to minimise the danger of zombie resurrection. ‘Imagine being afraid,’ I chortled while reading this, ‘that the undead might put you in mortal danger!’ Whereupon I flicked forward a couple of pages and came across Michael Howard’s plan to defend Gibraltar by sending a gunboat.

Personally, I’m against the idea of war with Spain. Although I say that cautiously, because we Remoaners must not hold back the will of the people. Indeed, such is the way of things these days, the more I were to rail against war with Spain, in my whiny, quinoa-eating way, the more attractive the prospect would presumably become, what with upsetting the likes of me now being a decent political reason to do almost anything. ‘It’s worth it to see your liberal tears!’ I’d be told, as the Tornados rained fire on Seville, and that’s a trap I’m keen to avoid. So war it is. Jolly good. Don’t let me stand in anybody’s way.

Likewise the blue passports. Is that a trap, too? When, for example, the MP Andrew Rosindell last week described the current maroon one as a ‘source of national humiliation’, he was messing with me, right? I’m supposed to blunder in derisively, right? Thereby turning the blue passport into symbol of everything the wrong sort of person is against, which in turn elevates it into being something all decent, freedom-loving Brits are mad keen to have. Right? ‘Hahahaha!’ I’m supposed to scream, probably quite camply, and perhaps in the Groucho Club. ‘What kind of freak cares about the colour of their passport?’ And yet, while doing this, I would, of course, be becoming the sort of person who cares about the colour of their passport.