Or, as she might have said, let them eat potatoes. When the chips are down, you must Battenburg down the hatches.
Patel is proposing to use starving Irish people as a Brexit bargaining chip. The failure to deliver the Brexit that The People allegedly voted for is of course the fault of the Irish.
“Everything is always blamed on us, to be sure,” grumbled Irish baker Pat O’Kayke. “But the big bollix is talking nonsense, so she is. The English can take their feckin’ baked beans and stick them where the sun don’t shine. And I don’t mean Ireland! Top o’the morning to ye!”
Patel was unrepentant. “I said cake, and I meant cake,” she said. “Cake means cake, and you can have your cake and eat it. I would have expected the bloody bog-trotters to be a bit more appreciative, after all the English have done for them!”
She later claimed that her remarks had been taken out of context.
“I know that cake doesn’t grow on trees,” she clarified. “Except magic money trees, but they are a protected species which only grow on unicorn reserves.”
The Irish response was emphatic. “Who needs unicorns, when you have leprechauns?” said O’Kayke. “We will just not let the man buy any more Guinness. They’ll come round soon enough. In the mean time, bottoms up. Slainte!”
Patel was horrified. “There will be no more Marmite leaving our ports until the EU relents and repents,” Patel shrieked. “I have a gun pointed towards my head, and I will fire repeatedly until I get what The British People voted for! You have been warned!”
Marie Antoinette would have been proud. Her misattributed misjudgement, both myopic and misanthropic, was a mistake. Or maybe a pisstake?
History will tell us. But history is written by the winners, they say, and nobody is at all sure about who the winners are any more.