TRANSCONTINENTAL SOFA SURFING : As the UK’s latest olive branch to the embittered EU transits its flame stage and turns to ash the real capital of Europe, 10 Downing Street, is once again wondering why it bothers?
”It’s like some endless old song,” a Downing Street spokesman told LCD Views, “where the story of a turbulent love affair, which ends in separation, plays again and again. We try, we really do, to help our former partner return to sanity, but it always ends in failure.”
Why failure is not a guessing game. As usual the UK reaches out to an EU in foetal position on the far side of the bed, lightly touching it on the shoulder and asking, “Are U OK hun?”, only to receive a stiffening of the distant body politic across The Channel. And then an unwarranted and unfair character assassination.
”You would have thought after five years of sleeping on their old school friend’s sofa the EU would be ready to admit it was wrong to think it could do better than the UK?” the spokesman adds. “I sometimes wonder if what appears to be European exceptionalism is in fact insecurity? They see us getting fitter and with new clothes, new hair and they think there’s no way we’ll have them back? As if all those decades together tenderly discussing lax financial regulations have been forgotten.”
And so here we are once more. The UK sat at the cafe table with half eaten pastries watching the EU walk out with its shoulders downcast but its nose raised haughtily in denial.
”Sooner or later there will be a change in fortunes,” the spokesman muses. “Sooner or later a new generation of politicians will arrive in Brussels who can see getting back together pools our sovereignty and make us stronger. And we’ll be ready when that day comes.”
But until the EU casts aside its blinkers and accepts the exceptionalism shining across The Channel is worth the sacrifice, the EU’s citizens will have to make do with the paltry offer dished up by its 500m citizens and miss out on enjoying the shared joy of cutting red tape, such as that which used to oversee the UK’s water quality.