Andrew Rawnsley: The bill for Boris Johnson’s Brexit is coming in and it’s punishingly steep
I smiled to see that Roger Daltrey, the Leave-supporting lead singer of the Who, has joined the chorus of rock stars furious that the post-Brexit visa rules will ruin their prospects of touring across the Channel. Mr Daltrey will have to sing Won’t Get Fooled Again to himself before moving on to Boris the Spider and I Can’t Explain.
It is particularly rending for the soul to witness the
rightwing press discovering that the cause they so noisily championed is not
the nirvana that they sold to their readers. They were cheering when Boris
Johnson flourished the Brexit deal that he concluded on Christmas Eve and
proclaimed: “This
is a cakeist treaty.” The UK would be having the sweet stuff and eating it
by gaining lots of shiny new benefits from being outside the EU while still
enjoying the historical advantages of frictionless trade with its closest
neighbours.
All those acquainted with Mr Johnson and his casual
relationship with the truth will have taken that with a juggernaut of salt.
Consider the prime minister’s specialist subject of cake. Anyone trying to take
a fresh cream cake across the Channel now does so at the risk of having
it impounded at customs because it is a dairy product. …
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