The Brex Factor: Moz proves the world is full of crashing bores

DANIEL HANNAN

‘The Leave campaign shit up shop 19 months ago,’ began a hastily-corrected if wholly accurate tweet from ‘Brain of Brexit’ Hannan last weekend. The rewritten version read: ‘Leave shut up shop 19 months ago. Remain has continued full throttle ever since. It has made no difference.’

As evidence, Dan added a link to a poll showing a one-point Remain lead. That’s a five-point shift away from Leave and the referendum result in just over a year and a half. ‘No difference’ indeed!

TONY GALLAGHER

‘High street prices are set to tumble after Brexit’ began a Sun piece about tariffs, which told readers that once we quit the EU, £6.16 would be knocked off the price of 20 cigarettes, ‘mozzarella-type cheese’ would be 69p cheaper and a £400 flatscreen telly would cost just £344.

The piece won acclaim from Jacob Rees-Mogg but unfortunately for Brexiteer editor Gallagher, contained so many factual errors – chiefly that tariffs are levied on import prices rather than retail price; and that all the products mentioned above are EU imports and therefore don’t currently attract tariffs – that it was quickly removed from the Sun’s website.

DOUGLAS CARSWELL

Having slipped into well-deserved obscurity after giving up his Clacton seat, the former UKIP MP had a big week on Twitter, calling John Major and Tony Blair ‘despicable people’ and harrumphing that ‘The EU cannot be reasoned with… Cabinet should work 
on the assumption we walk away without a deal.’

A far cry from what confident Carswell told voters would happen during the referendum campaign, or what he told the BBC on June 30 2016: ‘We will leave the single market but retain unrestricted access to the single market – that is actually far more straightforward than many people assume.’

JACOB REES-MOGG and NADINE DORRIES

The woman who voted against her own party 43 times since 2005 called John Major ‘a traitor’ for his Brexit speech. Mogg, who grew up in an 18th century country house and attended Eton and Oxford becoming a Rothschilds investment banker, dismissed Major as part of ‘the elite’.

Both then retired to spend time hurling stones about in their conservatories…

LIAM FOX and DAVID DAVIS

The international trade secretary demanded the EU cut a special deal for Britain because ‘we are not Canada, Norway or Switzerland’. The Brexit secretary followed up with a Sun article headlined ‘We need a special deal with EU… we’re NOT like other countries’.

So, after the Red, White and Blue Brexit and the Goldilocks Brexit, we’re now at the Don’t You Know Who I Am Brexit – and doesn’t it underline the arrogance and delusion underpinning this whole mess?

STEVE BANNON

The ruddy-faced race-baiter criticised the EU for being ‘vicious and dismissive’ over Brexit. Yes, that’s a lesson in being kindly and considerate from the man who called Hillary Clinton ‘a total phony’, ‘a grinder, but not smart,’ ‘an apple-polisher who couldn’t pass the DC bar exam’, ‘a joke’ and ‘a f**king bull dyke’.

NIGEL FARAGE

Fibbed on Question Time that he’d never flirted with the idea of a second referendum, telling David Dimbleby: ‘I didn’t. I said I feared a second referendum.’

Alas, there’s footage all over the internet of Farage telling the Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff on January 11: ‘I’m reaching the point of thinking we should have a second referendum on EU membership.’ Asked by Matthew Wright if he meant ‘the whole thing’, the Nicotine-Stained Man-Frog replied: ‘Of course.’

MORRISSEY

Shouted ‘bring back free speech’ at the start of his Brixton gig before changing the lyrics of newish song Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up On The Stage from ‘running for the exit’ to ‘running for the Brexit’.

What’s next? ‘And if the Vote Leave bus, Crashes into us, To die by your side, Is such a heavenly way to die’?

ROGER HELMER

The sleepy former MEP tweeted: ‘In New Zealand for a couple of days, I am struck again by the disgraceful way in which we cut off NZ agriculture at the knees in 1973, when we joined the EEC.

‘It was a disgrace. No one offered NZ a ‘transition period’.’

All 100% true… apart from the teensy fact that we DID have a transition period for trade with the EU and it lasted for five years!

Time for another nap, Roger!