The Brex Factor: Peter Bone headed for title of the Brexit Grinch

Though it was unveiled less than three months ago, the ‘Kippers are reportedly preparing to dump their lion logo after conceding that they cannot afford a copyright court fight with football’s Premier League, whose own emblem it closely resembles. UKIP insiders tip a return for the old pound sign logo – a typically bizarre choice given that we’re unlikely to be joining the Euro any time soon.

No news yet about how the lion will meet its end, but since Nigel Farage seems so keen on transatlantic links (of which more later), how about American dentist and Cecil the Lion assassin Walter Palmer dispatching it with a single symbolic shot at the next UKIP conference?

DAVID DAVIS

The Brexit secretary told LBC’s Nick Ferrari: ‘What’s the requirement of my job? I don’t have to be very clever. I don’t have to know that much.’

In which case, he’s definitely the right man to do it!

ANDREW PIERCE

‘Theresa May will walk away from talks rather than pay EU divorce bill,’ tweeted the Sky News pundit and Mail columnist back in July. By October, he’d changed tack slightly, writing: ‘One of EU’s five unelected presidents says £20billion divorce bill offer from Britain is ‘peanuts’. He’s nuts if he thinks we’re paying more.’

So how did ‘Toryboy’ greet news of the phase one Brexit agreement, which promised the EU £39bn more than he had predicted in July and almost double what he’d said we’d fork out in October?

The Pierce verdict was: ‘Way below the apocalyptic predictions… a price worth paying’!

JIMMY BUCHAN

What is it with Leavers who love everything about Brexit but just need one teensy exception made only for them? Buchan, a Scottish trawlerman turned business manager for the Scottish Seafood Association, told the New Statesman that he wanted out after coming ‘under pressure from the EU to live within the rules and regulations’.

However, Buchan added that he liked the part of the EU rules and regulations which had allowed cheap migrant workers to comprise 70% of those currently working in fish processing plants in the north east of Scotland.

Sounds like Jimmy would like to have his crab cake and eat it!

DAVID JONES

Brexiteers were furious when the Royal Mail announced that it had no plans in place to mark Brexit day – March 29, 2019 – with a special stamp. Sacked DExEU minister David Jones said the postal service has ‘an absolute obligation to recognise a new chapter in the history of this country’.

Of course, pro-Brexit MPs could have brought greater political pressure to bear on the Royal Mail had it not been sold off to assorted hedge funds. But it was, in 2011, thanks partly to David Jones, who voted for privatisation every step of the way.

RUTH FROM NORTH YORKSHIRE

This hitherto unknown political analyst called Radio Five Live’s Rachel Burden to slate the phase one Brexit agreement, saving much of her scorn for Leo Varadkar’s part in negotiations. ‘The Teesop, or whatever they call him, has brought this up as a red herring thrown across the path,’ she declared.

Anne went on to explain that, contrary to popular belief, Northern Ireland and the Republic currently ‘do have a physical border’. Burden asked whether she’d ever crossed it. ‘No’. Had she ever been to Ireland in the first place? ‘No.’

JACOB REES-MOGG

Many MPs on both sides of
the house were dismayed by David Davis’ revelation that the Brexit impact assessments, which he’d said on October 26 offered ‘excruciating detail’ on what might happen to UK industry, did not actually exist. Others felt insulted by the cobbled-together, heavily redacted 850-page dossier which he offered
instead.

Not so the Victorian Undertaker. ‘If the impact assessments did not exist, the government did not have to publish anything. The government has generously gone beyond what was required,’ he told the Brexit committee. Next week: Jacob Rees-Mogg praises the fibre-rich, highly sustainable meal he’s just eaten after being served up a shit sandwich in the name of Brexit.

NIGEL FARAGE

Arron Banks has accused Theresa May of overseeing ‘the biggest sell-out of this country since ‘Paedo Ted’ signed us up to the European project in 1973′. But it seems the nicotine-stained man-frog and his chums don’t mind alleged paedophile politicians so much when they are alive rather than dead, American rather than British and far-right rather than just right-wing.

Farage defended Judge Roy Moore, the failed Senate candidate accused of molesting a 14-year-old and sexually assaulting a 16-year-old when he was a prosecutor in his 30s, asking ‘how, for someone who has been in public life, [these issues] have not been raised before? He has been in the public life a long time.’

Of course, the NSMF didn’t stop to consider why teenage girls might have thought twice about accusing a member of the local legal establishment. But when did logic ever matter to Nigel?

MAX CLIFFORD

As the late PR pervert stands outside the Pearly Gates, desperately trying to spin St Peter into admitting him in return for some dirt on St Paul, it’s time to remember how Clifford is in some way responsible for all this mess.

In 2003, after a convivial lunch with Nigel Farage, the lifelong socialist decided to accept £100,000 for six months’ work making UKIP vaguely presentable. He later wrote: ‘I arranged to introduce Nigel to various editors, including Piers Morgan of the Mirror, Andy Coulson of the News of the World… Rebekah Wade of the Sun so that they could talk to him directly and be more open to the views of the party.’

He added: ‘When people talk about my work they usually mention my success in putting Rebecca Loos in the spotlight, but what I did for UKIP was personally far more difficult and satisfying.’

PETER BONE

The Wellingborough MP, hard Brexit headbanger and crap Sven Goran Eriksson lookalike has had a stunning few days: telling Theresa May he was ready to fly to Brussels to help with negotiations (she politely declined), appearing on Sky News in a hideous day-glo tie and boasting that Brussels had ‘caved in to all our demands’, then doing the TV rounds to insist we wouldn’t end up paying the EU a penny.

But perhaps best of all is the astonishingly petty Christmas e-card he has sent to admirers, depicting himself as a sort of Grinch of Brexit.

What’s up with Peter? It could be that his shoes are too tight. It could be his head isn’t screwed on just right. But I think the most likely reason of all may have been that his heart is two sizes too small.