The Brex Factor Mail fail: Chad puts Brexit on its stamps

Having called the Royal Mail ‘silly and bureaucratic’ for banning its van drivers from displaying England flags on their vehicles during the World Cup, man-of-the-people Jake told listeners of his podcast,’I will support England loyally. I very much want England to win.’

And where was the arch-patriot during the Three Lions’ opener against Tunisia? Giving a lecture at Speaker’s House on ‘Britain’s Place In The World In The 2020s’.

PHILIP IN SANDBACH

This caller to LBC’s James O’Brien show advocated both falling off a cliff and driving into a burning building in the name of Brexit.

Philip – believed to be former UKIP parliamentary candidate Philip Pinto – was asked about his attitude to Dominic Grieve’s amendment. James asked him: ‘They say ‘we must have the right to apply the brake if it becomes absolutely obvious that we’re driving into a burning building’. And you say ‘No, even if we’re driving into a burning building, we must absolutely not have a brake’?’

Philip responded: ‘Yes, I agree… If Brexit means falling off a cliff edge, so be it. That’s what we voted for.’

THE HAMILTONS

‘I used to love Twitter but it has become too vile too often,’ says Christine Hamilton.

Which Tweeters could she have in mind? Perhaps one who has recently used the social network to call Labour a ‘cesspit’, the Lords ‘coronetted quislings’ and to declare ‘yet again, Enoch Powell was right’?

As you may have already guessed, those messages were the work of Christine’s husband, the loveable Neil Hamilton.




ROD LIDDLE

‘Shameless and puffed-up with their own self-importance,’ was Liddle’s verdict on Remainer Labour MPs this week. Now, who else could those words apply to?

The burly Brexiteer told Sunday Times readers last week that as a six-year-old he had missed extra time in the 1966 World Cup final after being sent to bed. Reader George Smyth replied: ‘That match kicked off at 3pm. So he was sent to bed at 4.45pm. Rod’s parents must have enjoyed his company as much as a significant proportion of your readership does every Sunday.’

STEVE BAKER

The Brexit minister told the Commons that Brexit is ‘not a divorce’ and that he’d rather think of Britain and the EU as ‘loving siblings who have decided to grow up and move into the house next door’.

Ah, but what do you say when your loving sibling puts up a ‘No blacks, No Irish’ sign in his window and allows a tailback of lorries from Dover to park on your shared drive?

ISABEL OAKESHOTT

Invited on Question Time to perform her party trick of talking over Remainers, she told Dominic Grieve, ‘The problem, Dominic, is that people don’t trust you’.

Surely no-one’s in a better position to lecture about trust than the woman who included a risible single-source story about a pig’s head in her David Cameron biography and who initially assured Vicky Pryce that there would only be a ‘minor risk’ to her from publishing the story about Chris Huhne and speeding point-sharing which landed both of them in prison?

PAUL DACRE

The outgoing Daily Mail editor told The Spectator that he deserved partial credit for Brexit after running ‘a mature debate on mass immigration’. Dacre’s ‘mature’ front page headlines included the ‘Swarm On Our Streets’, ‘Foreign Workers Get 3 In 4 New Jobs’, ‘4,000 Foreign Murderers And Rapists We Can’t Kick Out’, and ‘Fury Over Plot To Let 1.5m Turks Into Britain’.

In a sign of his increasingly shaky relationship with reality, Dacre went on to boast that headlines like these had ‘helped prevent the rise here of the kind of ugly right-wing political movements now festering across the EU’. His drivel was published on the same day that a man accused of being a member of ugly right-wing political movement National Action admitted to plotting to kill Labour MP Rosie Cooper.

TIM MARTIN

The patron saint of morning drinkers has gone all Brexity Nostradamus. ‘In the next two weeks a smokescreen will be lifted and people will see all these doom and gloom messages aren’t true,’ claimed the Wetherspoons boss. ‘Soon, the people in the working men’s clubs and factories of Britain will see the customs union is no good.’

Acclaim in the factories and working men’s clubs! But what will the reaction be among the washerwomen, the happy urchin chimney sweeps, the little match girls and the youngsters toiling over their spinning jennies?

ANDREW PIERCE

‘Tory Boy’ claimed in a Daily Mail article that The New European was one of eight groups moving into a ‘war room based at Millbank Tower, a few hundred yards from parliament’ thanks to ‘shadowy multi-millionaire spin doctor’ Roland Rudd.

Utterly untrue… unless the view of Norwich City’s Carrow Road from our office window is actually Wembley and the arch has been taken down for cleaning. It’s Andrew’s greatest moment since, after Neymar’s move from Barcelona to PSG. He tweeted: ‘Britain gives £80m aid to Brazil which breaks football transfer record by selling player 4 £198m. Something wrong here.’


THE REPUBLIC OF CHAD

If you’re posting a letter in the central African state you can choose to do so with commemorative Brexit stamps featuring the faces of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

Before that gruesome twosome celebrate, it’s worth noting that Chad has also issued stamps bearing the images of even more heavyweight political figures – Snoopy, R2D2 and Pikachu. Thus proving the old adage: Philately will get you nowhere.