Whether even that would be sufficient to remove this peerless abomination of a government and end the
insanity isn’t, in the hilarious absence of a written constitution, remotely clear. But in the dwindling game
of escapist fantasy, it still looks like the best bet.
Failing that, or a last-minute EU capitulation to the Johnson-Cummings (Bummings) terrorist tactic – a long
shot, if less so now that Germany has convivially joined us on the brink of recession – we appear to be
absolutely screwed.
How horrendous it could become is known with any accuracy only to the precious few in Whitehall and
Westminster with access to the worst-case contingency planning. But if Yellowhammer – “a devastating
health check on the country’s preparedness,” according to a Cabinet Office source – is in the middle range
of doomsday scenarios, the assumption has to be that at its apex of horror, no deal would be cataclysmic
beyond belief.
Sadly, the name of the government’s planning for that doesn’t provide an anagram half as cute as
Yellowhammer’s. The best you can rearrange from Black Swan is “claws bank”, which barely hints at the
Bank of England’s inadequacy to protect sterling and the economy, or the prospect of the ATM machines
running dry in a tidal wave of panic buying.
As for the Orwell mayhem, the guiding principle behind this government’s criminal refusal to share its
findings with its victims, not to mention the heraldic motto of Brexit itself, has been lifted wholesale from
Big Brother’s trio of tenets. Ignorance is Strength.