Is Brexit really worth nine out of 10?

It’s been a big few days for rotting vegetables. First, the government decided it would once again have to postpone new post-Brexit checks on food imported from the EU lest they lead to a pile-up of rancid turnips at Dover. And then a rancid turnip turned up on LBC to declare that Brexit had been such a success so far that he’d give it a rating of nine out of 10.

In fact, said Boris Johnson, while promoting his memoir Unleashed, he would actually give it “ten out of ten for constitutional purity.” But since you can’t eat or spend constitutional purity, even this decaying potato felt he had to hedge his bets a little.

“In terms of delivering for the country, it’s going to take time to deliver its potential,” Johnson said – a line he’ll doubtless be spinning for fruition-free decades to come. He droned on: “The problem is not with the decision itself, it’s not even with the implementation of the decision. The problem is the use we make of it right now and the championing of Brexit.” Johnson would have continued this meaningless drivel had host Nick Ferrari not pressed him for a number out of 10, to which he finally replied: “Nine, OK.”

Nine out of ten. It’s a remarkable score, for one international embarrassment awarded by another. It makes you wish that Johnson had ditched the idea of a self-serving autobiography and knocked out a quick History Of The World instead (“Ask any dinosaur today about that asteroid and I think they’d give it ten out of ten for constitutional purity… the problem with the Plague of Locusts did not lie with the locusts themselves, merely the use the Egyptians made of the locusts and their failure to champion locusts in general… in terms of delivering a reliable cruising experience, the Titanic was always going to need time to deliver its potential”).

You suspect that nine out of ten small business owners who previously exported to or imported from the EU might feel rather differently about how successful Brexit has been. Likewise 90% of farmers, fishers, care workers, health workers, scientists, academics, gigging musicians, restaurant and bar owners, young people wanting to study in Europe, older people wanting to work in Europe, pensioners wanting to retire to Europe, those currently waiting in a passport queue, those currently waiting for their products to clear customs checks and those currently waiting for life-saving medication or a life-saving operation. But yeah, apart from them (and countless others), it’s a nine out of ten so far.

It makes you wonder what other notorious disasters Boris Johnson considers to be worthy out of a nine-out-of-ten rating. The Liz Truss mini-budget? Laura Kuenssberg’s email security? Labour’s post-election comms? Speed 2, Godfather 3, Jaws 4 and Sinclair’s C5? Katy Perry’s new album? Elon Musk at Twitter? The Plot by Nadine Dorries?

Of course Johnson has already hailed the last on that list, claiming at the time of publication that Dorries should be considered on a par with Solzhenitsyn. Thus we can file this latest nonsense away with that and all the other lies on his rapidly growing inverted pyramid of piffle.

A more truthful rating for how leaving the EU has gone so far? Why not try updating the old Whiskas slogan? “Brexit. Nine of out 10 prats prefer it.”