Boris Johnson must be insane to equate Brexit with Ukraine

Last Sunday morning, the usual government suspects were herded on to the TV in order to explain how, when the prime minister, in the previous day’s conference speech, said that the Ukrainian people’s heroic resistance against the Russian invasion was, you know, just like Brexit, when you thought about it, he hadn’t really meant that the Ukrainian people’s heroic resistance against the Russian invasion was, you know, just like Brexit, when you thought about it, despite having just been shown the video of the prime minister saying that the Ukrainian people’s heroic resistance against the Russian invasion was, you know, just like Brexit, when you thought about it.

As ever, on the few occasions that Boris Johnson is right about something it’s by mistake. In three vital respects, the current conflict in Ukraine IS very similar to Brexit: they’re both taking much longer to resolve and are causing far more damage and misery than their proponents ever anticipated, the bulk of an entire nation’s news media has been co-opted into peddling the myth that they’re going swimmingly and, of course, they were both largely orchestrated and financed by the Russian government.

Nonetheless, the more or less universal gasps of “Seriously?” that greeted the PM’s words might suggest that this particular analogy is NOT one that he might care to revisit in future. But we know there’s no way Mr Johnson is going to stop invoking Brexit for a bit of cheap applause, since it’s the only “achievement” that he can point to (if you regard the socio-economic equivalent of deliberately shooting yourself through both feet as an achievement, and a depressingly high percentage of the population still do).

So with this in mind, and with one eye on the calendar, here are SOME MORE THINGS THAT ARE, YOU KNOW, JUST LIKE BREXIT, WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT.

THE SPRINGTIME

Ah yes, the spring! Nature’s yearly miracle! When the sun starts to inch its way back up into the sky and the green shoots of recovery burst forth from the thawing ground. What better metaphor for a Britain liberated by Brexit than that great annual revivification, when birds and animals give birth to a new, hopeful generation of offspring, nearly all of whom are instantly devoured by predators, just as nature decrees. No regulations! No protections! No pettifogging bills of rights or nannyish health and safety guidelines! Only the strongest and fittest (or rather, those with the strongest and fittest parents) survive! Nature and capitalism, both red in tooth and claw as God intended!

Which reminds me:

EASTER

Even Brexit’s remaining cheerleaders acknowledge that so far it’s causing more harm than good, but this, they insist, will all be worth it “in the end”. This sacrifice we’re all making now, of economic turmoil, rocketing fuel prices, dwindling food supplies and chronic skilled labour shortages will all be rewarded when Britain emerges into a new golden age of… something.

So the perfect analogy for our nation’s redemption is of course the Easter story… The agonising martyrdom and miraculous resurrection of Jesus is the ideal metaphor for Brexit, in that it established for all time the central Christian doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, disagreements about the precise nature of which have plunged mankind into more and bloodier conflicts than any other question in history. So it’s right up there with Brexit in the “unintended consequences” stakes.