Brexit: You’re Having a Laugh
As the United Kingdom continues to drift in the storm it feels good to look back at some of the disaster’s funnier moments.
Things looked tense but sort of bright as the crucial day approached. Earlier John Oliver had dished out compelling facts and hilarity in equal measures in the Last Week Tonight. The piece — which has since had over 10 million views on YouTube — was so fantastic that Sky News (which is coincidentally owned by Pro-Brexit press magnate Rupert Murdoch) refused to broadcast it until after the vote in case it unduly influenced voters. The song at the end is particularly good.
Sir Winston Churchill once said that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. As many on the leave side publicly regretted their protest vote and the politicians who convinced them this was a good idea started to go back on every promise, things looked rather grim for poor old Blighty.
The 48% of Remainers huddled together in a giant social media support group, trying their best to process just how exactly it had all come to this. One person actually compiled the stages of Brexit Grief in a helpful graph:
While Hugh Laurie probably supplied the best suggestion
It never rains but it pours. England’s misery was compounded by the fact that it lost to Iceland and was knocked out of the European Football Championships. Some would say there is a beautiful sort of irony in that…
Even Jane Austin fans weighed in on the argument:
The Labour opposition got busy tearing itself apart instead of holding the government to account over urgent questions about the economy and the worrying rise of racist attacks post-Brexit. As an increasingly unappetizing selection of politicians were paraded as potential successors to David Cameron, it prompted the public to come up with some suggestions of their own for the Prime Minister job:
The scene from “Downfall” where Hitler learns that they’ve lost the war lends itself particularly well to spoofs, and many a creative subtitling has emerged over the years. This latest Brexit one, however, deserves an Oscar all of its own, brilliantly summing up the position for the front runner in the prime ministerial race, Boris Johnson.
The hatred against Johnson reached fever-pitch as it dawned on the public just how utterly unprepared for winning the Leave campaign had been. The hashtag #CurseBorisJohnson started trending on Wednesday, and by the end of the day had over 16000 tweets.
Boris finally realised just how poisoned the chalice of leadership was, and on Thursday decided to withdraw his bid to become Prime Minister. Actor Ewan McGregor (who I’m assuming voted to remain part of the European Union like most Scots) summed up the nation’s feelings rather nicely at that point:
Many Americans have told me over the past week that while they feel sorry for us here in the UK, they’re also glad we can no longer poke such fun at the craziness of American politics. At least not till November, that is.
