A Needle’s Eye
- Liam John
- May 18, 2019
- 4 min read
Let’s talk Brexit Secretaries. First up: Britain’s first Secretary of State for the Exiting of the European Union – David Davis. A man about as dull as his name would suggest.
It started off quite well for Davis, mostly because he only had to up-sell the vague idea of Brexit. He did so by bragging about the ease of the process and occasionally the difficulty of the task in an attempt to outline his own competency on Twitter. The following is a brilliant quote from 6 months into David Davis’ first year in government:
“It is like threading the eye of the needle.” He smugly explained: “If you have a good eye and a steady hand, it is easy enough, but if somebody jogs your elbow, it is harder.”
David Davis resigned from office after two years, having made zero real progress, as the country started to sober up from the 25-month fever dream that was the Brexit referendum, Davis landed himself a part-time consultancy role with private sector construction firm JCB.
Where he is paid £3,000 per hour.
Davis pictured here with JCB Chairman Lord Bamford in November 2017 while still Brexit Secretary
Enter Dominic Raab.
Davis’ replacement: the right Honourable Dominic Raab MP had a promising first few weeks in office, bolstered by the right-leaning media swooning over his black-belt in karate. Perhaps hoping desperately that his concentration and precision-movements may help him thread this long-neglected needle that had fallen on his lap.
Raab’s short but calamitous four months as Brexit Secretary were not smooth sailing, he once stood up to answer questions regarding the Irish border following Brexit. Presumably to set at ease the mind of British citizens of both sides of the border.
Raab stood up and proudly declared that he had not fully read the Good Friday Agreement but continued his prognosis on what Brexit should look like for Nothern Ireland.
A real black-belt in incompetence, Raab then told a conference in North London, with some genuine surprise, that Britain is a: “peculiar economic entity.” Claiming he: “hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this.”
The People’s Expert on all things Europe then tried to clarify: “if you look at the U.K. and how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing.”
Dominic Raab didn’t know how reliant the United Kingdom was on EU-member-states for trade. When he began negotiating trading options for the United Kingdom with the EU.
Thankfully this didn’t last much longer, he quit in opposition to Theresa May’s trade deal with the European Union in November of 2018. A trade deal negotiated by him.
If Davis can be condemned for being full of himself and Raab for talking himself into holes, the right Honourable Stephen Barclay our current Secretary for the Exiting of the European Union could be accused of neither. The slow, calm, collected, seemingly lazy and utterly useless yes-man employed by Theresa May towards the end of 2018 gave full control of the notoriously fidgety job to the notoriously fidgety Prime Minister.
Prime Minister and Brexit Secretary leaving Downing Street
Theresa May did a worse job than most people expected, her innovative needle-threading technique of repeatedly slamming her own face off of a table until someone sympathises with her enough to accept her deal failed, as her cabinet is made up entirely of reptiles’ void of empathy.
Here we are 6 months later and beyond the deadline for leaving the EU. I don’t think there is a single person in the United Kingdom who, if presented with this simile, would describe the needle as threaded.
Davis said: “If you have a good eye and a steady hand, it is easy enough.”
Where on earth did that idea come from?
In March 2016, Boris Johnson said: “Everyone is suddenly wrangling about the terrors of the world outside…actually there are plenty of people who think the cost of getting out would be virtually nil and the cost of staying in would be very high.”
In September 2016, Nigel Farage said: “To me, Brexit’s easy. We have back British passports; we have control of our fishing waters and our companies are not subject to EU law through the signal market.”
It became apparent this week that Nigel Farage may lead the winning party (his own Brexit Party) in next week’s European election, it was also announced that Boris Johnson is the front-runner to become the next Prime Minister.
Our future Prime Minister standing in front of a bus inscribed with a provable lie
Now I don’t know if organising Britain’s exit from the European Union takes martial arts training, confidence in your ability, competence, empathy or even a steady hand.
But while convincing 17m people that they want a needle threaded and disappearing from politics for two years, and being praised on return for accusing the government of threading the needle wrong may be fascinating in a political drama. It’s nauseating when it’s Britain’s government and representation in Europe.
Johnson and Farage’s enthusiasm for Brexit combined with their lack of worthwhile input during the Brexit negotiation stages have been more harmful to the country than a hundred Theresa May’s, a thousand Dominic Raab’s and a million David Davis’. It was their needle to thread.
After all, unlike the Prime Minister they supported Brexit before 2016.
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