So that was Brexit day. And all we got was a lousy royal yacht

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/29/royal-yacht-brexit-theresa-defeat-parliament

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I had a pretty good notion that we would not be leaving the EU on the 29 March: I actually bet Harry Cole, a rightwing columnist of toxic renown, £100 on live television that this would never happen. Call that a declaration of interest. But here are some things that I never predicted, and I challenge anyone to say that they did.

Nobody could have seen Theresa May’s learning strategies unfold in the way that they have. Some people learn by putting their hand in the fire. Some people learn by putting their hand in the fire twice. Nobody anywhere has learned by putting their hand in the fire three times, then daring the fire to not burn them by threatening to do it a fourth.

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If you’d said in advance that a prime minister would behave like this, it would have been more than Project Fear. This is basically “strong point” strategy in the first world war: attack the strongest point and see what happens. Then in 1917 it was found that bad things happen, and it hasn’t been tried since.

Nobody could have foreseen that the far right would be planning crime in Whitehall, and that they would have managed to persuade themselves that if they did it after 11pm, it would be legal. Because before that, we would be subject to the Lisbon treaty, and that would class as domestic terrorism; whereas, after that, we would be bound by the laws of Magna Carta, and it would all be cool.

Help #femi This doing the rounds with leavers on my social pages. Is this true! will leavers use this as an excuse to cause disruption @FullFact @mrjamesob #lisbontreaty pic.twitter.com/urFCr9sS96

The question of what, exactly, they’d be crimeing about, if we’d left the EU and were no longer bound by the Lisbon treaty, we’ll have to leave for another day. Nobody would ever have guessed that an actual MEP, Gerard Batten, would be spreading rumours that the police were going to deploy water cannon against them (cannon versus gammon; now that’s a Total Wipeout I’d watch) which the Metropolitan Police would then have to take to Twitter to deny.

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Seriously, which of us could possibly have foreseen that there would be a man in Parliament Square selling polyester St George flags for a fiver? Who knew that the Brexiter’s last gasp of generating hope would be to promise a royal yacht, to spread faith in Britannia around the world, and unite the country. Nobody could even have guessed, surely, that we would learn the name Jake Berry, who sounds like a member of a boyband, but is actually a junior international trade minister whose brainchild this is.

Nobody would have guessed that MPs would be freestyling like this, saying no to everything, unable to distinguish between the thought outside the box and the daft suggestion. Nobody could ever have known that Nigel Farage, whose appetite for public protest has been shown to be low, would be snarling up Central London as his last hoorah. It was obviously never going to be easy, Brexit. The people with the competence didn’t have the enthusiasm, and the people with the enthusiasm didn’t have the competence. But seriously, in all of our defence, who could possibly have seen any of this coming?