Remain-supporting ex-government ministers led by Philip Hammond have leaked to the press a secret document warning of the perils of No Deal Brexit.
The document – codenamed Operation Yellowhammer – was prepared by civil servants who war-gamed the various possible disaster scenarios if Britain crashes out of the EU on October 31, falls off a cliff edge and is left isolated and without friends on the world stage.
Here are some of their findings:
- Closure of two oil refineries
- Delays of up to four hours at border crossing between Spain and Gibraltar
- Dog owners forced to replace their pets with goldfish
- A hard Irish border
- Orange-flavoured Smarties to be replaced by coffee-flavoured ones
- Three-month ‘meltdown’ at UK ports
- English breakfast tea to be replaced by decaffeinated Rooibos
- Massive disruption at airports, St Pancras, Eurotunnel
- Movies screened with the first ten minutes and last ten minutes missing to save energy
- Shortages of medicine including insulin for diabetics
- North Wales Police to be put in total charge of UK traffic regulations: instant fines for any motorist who exceeds 15mph
- All British meat to be banned unless it’s halal
- Every child’s favourite toy to be stolen in the night by burglars with masks and stripey tops who have been lurking in the wardrobe/under bed.
- Shortages of fresh food, which will become more expensive
- Women much more likely to cry when they see what their hairdresser has done to hair; men even less likely to notice that they’ve had their hair done
- Love Island to be broadcast 24/7 in four seasonal editions, sandwiched between double bills of Springwatch, Autumnwatch etc with Sir Chris Packham
You’ll forgive me if I’ve got some of the details wrong. Unfortunately, they were leaked to the Sunday Times – a paper I no longer read since it got so oppressively woke and abandoned its previous pro-Brexit stance in favour of Remain. But I think my list gives a pretty good idea of the flavour of Operation Yellowhammer, whose prognostications are so utterly risible that only a Remainer civil servant could have invented them, and only a diehard Remoaner would be gullible enough to believe them.
What this non-story shows – and it really is a non-story: the only reason anyone is taking it seriously is because of the Sunday Times‘s residual prestige dating back to the days when it was still a credible and influential newspaper – is the increasing desperation of the forces of Remain as they mount their last-ditch defences against the inevitable Brexit on October 31.
Operation Yellowhammer is just a warmed-over rehash of Project Fear.
The 40 Tory MPs who, according to the Telegraph, are planning a rebellion against Brexit represent about as credible a threat as Lambert Simnel, Perkin Warbeck or Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Sure in their deluded heads they may consider themselves to be saviours of the nation, acting selflessly to protect British voters from the consequences of a Brexit they were too ill-educated to understand.
But most of us just think of them as yesterday’s men and women who should never have been admitted onto the Conservative candidates’ lists in the first place.
Guto Bebb, for example, the ‘Conservative’ MP for Aberconwy in mid-Wales has gone so far as to say that it would be better to have Jeremy Corbyn as a caretaker prime minister to avert the ‘generational damage’ from a no-deal Brexit.
Can anyone see a traitor like that surviving a general election in a Conservative constituency dominated by Brexit voters?
In six months time, he’ll be nothing more than a pub quiz trivia question which only the real quiz bore obsessives will get right. Everyone else will confuse him with the more famous, charming and intelligent Boba Fett out of Star Wars.
It goes without saying that none of the doomsday predictions of Operation Yellowhammer is likely to occur on or after October 31. That’s because Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove – the two masterminds of the Brexit operation – have put the government and the civil service onto a war footing to ensure that even if Britain does end up with the so-called “No Deal” Brexit it will be more than capable of coping with the short term teething difficulties.
But I for one welcome these last ditch Remainer shenanigans, such as the claim by a former minister that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s accusation that the Operation Yellowhammer leak is the work of a “Remain alliance” is a ‘preposterous smear.’
All it will mean is that our joy at the Remain blob’s utter destruction on October 31 will be all the sweeter when finally it happens.