WELL, THAT DIDN’T TAKE LONG

So, here we are, four days into Brexit and we are already threatening war with a fellow EU member.

This morning the Tories, for some weird reason, wheeled out Michael Howard, who, as you might have guessed, is one of these noblemen the Tories keep locked away for just such purposes. You probably remember him best as Michael ‘Prison Works’ Howard, Michael ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking’ Howard, or even Michael ‘Something of the Night’ Howard, but we must refer to him by his proper name The Noble Baron Howard of Lympne, CH, PC, QC. It’s only respectful. And we are nothing if not respectful.

Right, so the Tories dug him out from whatever dungeon they have been keeping him in, to remind us that a precious female prime minister, when a Great British territory was threatened, hastened to dispatch a mighty Task Force and, like Britannia herself, became the greatest military leader of all time.

Old Howard was, he said, sure that the current lady prime minister would not hesitate to do the same. Although she might have to ask President Hollande for a boat.

Now old Howard, for all he reminds even his colleagues of Dracula, used to be someone. Indeed, after Wee Willie Hague and then his grandad, Iain Duncan Smith, he was the third disastrous leader of the Tory Party to sit opposite Tony Blair on the opposition benches. So, I suspect that he was sent out to fly a kite that they should use military might to deal with Spain if they don’t get their way.

If it goes down in a frenzy of red white and blue waving fascist nutters, then it may become policy. If not then the Tories can say that it was just some batshit mad old aristocratic senior citizen having had too much Port for breakfast.

One of the reasons that the EU was set up was to try to foster peace in a continent which had been constantly at war throughout a thousand years and more. Four days into Brexit and the Brits are sabre rattling. (Probably all they have to rattle.)

It may, too, have escaped Mr Howard’s notice that Spain is a NATO member and that NATO is a “one for all and all for one!” organisation. In short, if you attack one member, you attack all members. Oh well…

Fortunately not all talk today has been of war.

Brexiteers are making plans for the future. The Great British Passport all in blue will be making a return according to the Sunday Diana. (So usual caveats apply.)

And some fossil from the Telegraph wants Imperial Measures brought back.

12 d = 1/-; 20/- = £1; 12”- 1′; 3′ = 1 yard; 1760 yds = 1 mile… and don’t get me started on tons, hundredweights and quarters, chains, poles and gills!

I look forward to farthings’ return. A wren on the back, and, who knows, a portrait of Queen Victoria on the front.

Very Jolly.