The Grinch Who Tried To Steal Brexit – an exclusive story by MITCH BENN

But the Gritch, who lived just outside London, Did NOT!

The Gritch hated Brexit! The whole Brexitshambles!

So he sat in his shed and he grumbled and rambled.

It could be his head wasn’t full of belief.

It could be that man-flu was giving him grief.

But I think that the reason he found it so rough,

May have been that his brain wasn’t quite small enough.

Whatever the reason, His brain or the fevers,

He sat there on Brexit Eve, hating the Leavers,

Staring down from his shed with a sour, Gritchy frown,

At the warm lighted windows in each Leaver town.

For he knew every Leaver in the land without fail,

Was busy believing the Express and the Mail

‘And they’re mocking Remoaners!’ he snarled with a sneer,

‘Next March is Brexit! It’s practically here!’

Then he grabbed his guitar, with his Gritch fingers strumming,

‘I MUST find some way to stop Brexit from coming!’

‘Why, for nearly. three years I’ve put up with it now!

‘I MUST stop this Brexit from coming! But HOW?’

Then he got an idea! An awful idea!

THE GRITCH GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

‘I know just what to do!’ The Gritch laughed to himself.

And he took his laptop down from the shelf.

And he chuckled, and clucked, saying ‘I’ll show those quitters!’

And he opened the laptop and logged onto Twitter.

He said: ‘Now to ruin this whole Brexit season,

‘With empirical data and logic and reason!’

His long Gritchy fingers danced over the keys,

As he skewered each point of the Leavers with ease.

There was no need to mute or to block or unfriend ’em

In response to each incisive point he would send ’em

They’d just bring up the 2016 referendum.

‘It’s the will of the people!’ a gammon would shout.

‘Is it still?’ said the Gritch. ‘How about we find out?

‘If you’re really so sure, if you’re really so certain,

‘Then just who would a vote on the last deal be hurting?’

The Leavers would bluster and grumble a bit

Then post a rude gif and say ‘get over it,

‘We won and you lost’ then they’d block him and quit.

The Gritch smiled a mean Gritchy smile and said ‘Yes!

‘They’re so bad at debating I’m sure of success!

‘The whole Brexit thing’s built on nonsense and lies!

‘And all I need do is to open their eyes!

‘When they see they’ve been fooled, won’t they get a surprise…’

Each issue the Leavers would try to discuss,

Was as false as the lies on the side of the bus.

And Gritch would dismiss it without any fuss.

The quitters got mad! The quitters got furious!

‘It’s hardly my fault that your reasoning’s spurious,’

Replied the smug Gritch, having way too much fun

For he knew that his evening had only begun.

For all that the Leavers would slander and huff

They had not one point the Gritch couldn’t rebuff

‘Soon,’ thought the Gritch, ‘they’ll have had quite enough.

‘I’ll tire them all out here on Twitter,’ he said,

To himself with a smirk ‘and then once 
they’re abed,

‘I’ll compose an ingenious thousand-word piece,

‘Full of pathos and truth and cathartic release,

‘A treatise! An epic! A heart-rending paean,

‘To reason and truth for The New European.

‘I’ll expose every falsehood! Nail every lie!

‘I’ll eviscerate Brexit and leave it to die!

‘All of my powers of thought I’ll unleash,

‘In the form of a well-observed literary pastiche.

‘And if I can be bothered, I might take the time,

‘And effort to make the whole bloody thing rhyme.’

So he made some more coffee, looked at the clock,

On his laptop he opened a new blank doc,

Then the Gritch poured out all of his anger and rage

Against Brexit down onto that virtual page.

He brought up the chaos, the lack of a plan,

That the Tories are acting like cowards to a man,

That Theresa May’s visibly struggling to cope,

That Jeremy Corbyn is NOT our last hope,

The insolubility of Northern Ireland,

And that Dominic Raab didn’t know we’re an island,

How no-deal would flush all our lives down the drain

But that some people think it’s the same as ‘Remain’

The perfidious scheming of Boris and Gove;

Such a picture of Brexity madness he wove

And in his conclusion, he banished all doubt

That a Final Deal Vote is the only way out

Of the madness our self-serving ‘leaders’ created,

Then slumped on his keyboard, exhausted and sated.

But as he lay over his laptop, inert,

His rest was disturbed by a pinging alert…

Though the east of the sky was not yet even pale,

He clicked on the icon and saw ‘you’ve got mail’.

A message appeared on the Gritch’s screen

From Cindy-Lou Leaver, aged only 14.

The Gritch had been caught by this young Beleaver,

On her iPad in bed googling Justin Bieber.

She DM’d the Gritch and said with a cry,

‘Why are you ruining Brexit? Please WHY?’

But, you know, that old Gritch was so smart and so slick,

He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!

‘Why, my sweet little tot,’ said the Gritch with a smile,

‘I’m not trying to ruin it; that would be vile

‘I’m getting behind it,’ he said with a laugh

‘Like it tells us to do in the ol’ Telegraph.

‘I’m not sabotaging or being obstructive,

‘All my suggestions are good and constructive,

‘We’re in this together,’ the mean old Gritch lied,

‘So let’s make it work! We’re all on the same side.’

This seemed to convince her, and so she logged off

‘These Leavers are thick,’ said the Gritch with a scoff.

He noticed the time! He sat up with a fright.

He’d been ranting and raving and typing all night!

He’d written the piece but forgot to send it!

He sent off the email, no time to amend it.

Then settled down in anticipation

For 48 hours, until publication.

And so two days later, the Gritch rubbed his hands,

As The New European was hitting the stands,

And he smiled as he thought of the Leavers all reading

His razor-sharp words that would leave their minds bleeding.

‘PoohPooh to the Leavers!’ he said with a yuk.

‘They’re finding out now that Brexit will suck!

‘They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do!

‘They’ll log onto the net in a minute or two,

‘Then the Leavers of Britain will all cry boo hoo!’

So he paused. And the Gritch fixed his eyes on the screen.

And he did see a new trending internet meme

But the meme wasn’t sad! Why, it seemed to be merry!

It couldn’t be so! But it WAS merry! VERY!

He stared down at Twitter! The Gritch popped his eyes!

Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise!

Every Leaver in Britain, the tall and the small,

Was happy! Without any reason at all!

He HADN’T stopped Brexit from coming! IT CAME!

Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Gritch, with his gritch-fingers aching and blue,

Stood puzzling and puzzling: ‘How is this true?

‘It came without reason! It came without facts!

‘It came without evidence, truth or syntax!’

And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.

Then the Gritch thought of something he hadn’t before!

‘Maybe Brexit,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from the brain.

‘Maybe Leavers… perhaps… are completely insane!’

And what happened then? Well… in Britain they say,

That the Gritch’s large brain shrank three sizes that day!

And the minute his brain didn’t feel quite so big,

He said ‘I love Brexit!’, dancing a jig

And decided to spend the next four months drinking

Because life’s so much easier, once you stop thinking…