Brexfactor: Theresa proves to be a bloody difficult host

Brexit’s man-frog met the elephant in the room as Farage told listeners to his radio show that during the EU referendum he knew Boris Johnson’s notorious £350m figure that ‘we give the EU every week’ was untrue but neglected to say anything about it because he wanted to win. ‘During the campaign I was asked repeatedly about this figure and I never once supported it,’ Farage said. ‘But sorry Boris, it’s wrong.’

Even setting aside Freddo Farage’s moral cowardice at keeping quiet while his own side lied to the country, his protestations of innocence are somewhat at odds with his June 9 appearance on Question Time, a fortnight before the vote, in which he said of potential gains from voting Leave: ‘Can we just get to the truth of this – £350 million a week is wrong, it’s higher than that.’

9. Cardboard cutout Theresa May

Slightly more animated than the real thing and considerably cheaper than a pair of Amanda Wakeley leather trousers at just £37.70. Yet currently rated only 1.5 out of 5 on Amazon. Customers’ questions and answers include, ‘Q: Is is strong and stable? A: In windy conditions it is liable to flap around aimlessly until it crashes into a member of the public, at which point it runs away and hides.’

8. Brexity football fans

Sunderland have been relegated from the Premier League, with Middlesbrough set to join them after they face title favourites Chelsea on Monday night. The other team to make the drop is likely to be either Swansea or Hull.

The point of this Motsonesque diversion? All four clubs are from areas which voted Leave, while promoted Brighton and Newcastle hail from Remain areas. Meanwhile, Brentford might not have been relegated from the Championship like Leave-voting Rotherham and Wigan, but they have failed to make the playoffs too – possibly as karma for this supporter’s replica shirt…

7. Godfrey Bloom

The former UKIP MEP, who left the party a month after the 2013 incident in which he claimed British foreign aid was going to ‘Bongo Bongo Land’, claimed that the British Medical Association was ‘the doctor’s militant trade union, straight out of the 70s’.

That makes them at least a decade more modern than Godders, who a few days earlier had retweeted a photo of London in the 1960s, adding: ‘I worked at Phoenix House in Pall Mall, drove a mini, lunched in St.James’s Park, clocked the mini skirted crumpet. Played rugger. Bliss.’

6. Kevin Newton

The Scottish UKIP activist rushed to the defence of Glasgow council hopeful and gorilla-and-guillotine enthusiast Gisela Allen by telling the Daily Mirror: ‘Ms Allen was voicing her personal views in her inimical and jocular way.’

Alas, Kevin, ‘inimical’ does not mean the same as ‘inimitable’. It’s defined by the Collins dictionary as ‘adverse or unfavourable; not friendly, hostile’ – which, to be fair, does seem to sum up Gisela rather well (unless you’re a gorilla).

5. Boris Johnson

He’s been accused by former Taoiseach and EU ambassador John Bruton of having ‘criminally misled’ the British people during the referendum, thrown under a big red lie bus by Nigel Farage and criticised by his own sister for peddling ‘faulty goods.’ And there are rumours that once the election is done, he’ll be removed as Foreign Secretary. So what next for artfully tousled liar BoJo?

With his talent for deception and blowing things up out of all proportion, it’s no surprise to see Boris being tipped as a future editor of The Sun by no less than David Yelland, who did the job from 1998-2003. Perhaps, for the benefit of any readers missing Kelvin Mackenzie, his first edition could contain a reprint of the ‘wallowing in victim status’ editorial about Liverpool he ran in The Spectator in 2004?

4. Arron Banks

The former UKIP donor’s Leave.EU organisation attempted to jump on Anthony Joshua’s bandwagon with a Tweet of shrill arrogance and characteristic stupidity.

The contrast in tone between the jingoistic drivel of ‘knocked out and grovelling, how the EU will be feeling in just under two years time’ with Joshua’s gracious praise for vanquished opponent Wladimir Klitschko couldn’t be greater; the fact that the Watford-born heavyweight spent time after his win chatting to and posing for photos with London’s anti-Brexit mayor Sadiq Khan appears to have escaped Leave.EU completely. In July, Joshua was photographed visiting a Dubai mosque, where no doubt he will have encountered several Muslims – the religion Banks wants to hit with a 10-year immigration ban.

3. Katie Hopkins

She’s already considerably poorer after tangling with Jack Monroe, but have the Mail Online columnist’s legal troubles only just begun? Poundland Ayn Rand Hopkins had been reported to police for hate speech after Tweeting: ‘Explosion in France, shooting at a German hospital, knife attack in London. And Ramadan has not yet begun. Without food these sods get nasty.’ She then doubled down with a (hastily-deleted) Tweet of Netflix show Dear White People’s logo, adding the message ‘Dear black people. If your lives matter why do you stab and shoot each other so much.’

Just a reminder that the 1986 Public Order Act says: ‘A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if they (a) intend thereby to stir up racial hatred or (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby’.

2. YO Cedar

The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Arresting book titles, to be sure, but can any of them be said to be as truly startling as that of Cedar’s new work, God’s Hand in Brexit: A Prayer Guide?

Like both God and Brexit, the tome moves in mysterious ways. ‘As a field sales executive I’m accustomed to spending a lot of time in my car, driving from one meeting to the next,’ begins one chapter. Shortly thereafter Cedar is protesting the erection of the Temple of Baal in Trafalgar Square, which I must have missed on the 9 o’clock news.

The author assures us that the big man upstairs is ‘faithfully working behind the scenes as we fervently pray that our nation will turn in its God-given direction, outside of the EU, once again embracing its Judeo-Christian morals and heritage.’ Once we’ve embraced this, Cedar assures us, ‘care homes would no longer be needed… there would be less strain on the National Health Service as believers lay hands on the sick.’

It all sounds too miraculous to be true, but as Saint George once told us, ‘I gotta have faith, faith, faith.’

1. Theresa May

The worst dinner host since Hannibal Lecter. And at least HE had a couple of decent catchphrases.