Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Richard Madeley, Brexit and the new conspiracism

A lot of people are saying that you are having an affair. I don’t know if they’re right. It’s not for me to say. I just told your husband that a lot of people are saying that.

A lot of people are saying that you are a child abuser. You want me to check? Look at the court records and the sex offender register? Nah. No need. I just need to say that a lot of people are saying you are a child abuser. Why would they say it if there wasn’t something to say? You say they’re wrong. Really? A lot of people will say, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?

A lot of people are saying that Brexit isn’t Brexit unless it is the most extreme form of Brexit imaginable. No less an authority than Richard Madeley, of the ITV breakfast show Good Morning Britain, explained to Remain activist Femi Oluwole that if we left the EU but stayed in or close to the Customs Union we wouldn’t have left the EU, even though we would have done just that.

Madeley didn’t wholly commit himself to a nonsensical position. Instead, he repeated what a lot of people were saying. Theresa May’s deal takes us ‘out of the EU,’ replied Femi with the look of a teacher faced with an astonishingly dense child. ‘Let’s be clear on that,’ he added. If an association with the Customs Union meant we were still a member of the EU, then Turkey would be a member of the EU, which it is not. Why is this even an argument?  

Because Madeley said:

‘A lot of people who want to leave don’t like that deal. They don’t think it does take us out of the EU because it keeps us in the Customs Union.’

‘But it literally does,’ replied Femi.

‘But a lot of people don’t think that it does,’ said Madeley.

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