and finally...


Great Brexit buffet proves to be a feast


Exiting Europe has led to a job creation scheme, says Chris Proctor W


hat an unqualified success Brexit has turned out to be! It might bankrupt the country, tear the


populace asunder and leave us the laughing stock of the cosmos, but it’s provided more work opportunities for our trade than anything since Katie Price. I shall certainly vote Remain in any


future referendum in the hope that a victory for that faction will mean the declaration of a formal draw and the announcement of a further ‘best-of- three’ vote. This can’t keep going long enough in my view. Yes, much news copy has reported


misleading and unsubstantiated balderdash, and most of the opinion pieces have been absurdly prejudiced and uninformed. But, mixed metaphors aside, the resultant nonsense has kept the food on the table safe from the wolves at many a newshound’s door. What would have happened over the


past couple of years without this media epic? Without Brexit, pages and screens would have looked like a photo of Frisco on a foggy Friday. Magazines would have shed pages, thinned like vegans in Argentinian bistros. Twitter feeds would have starved. All praise to Brexit, then! It’s made


Fleet Street a boom town. Demand for our services has been overwhelming: not just in news-gathering but also in pamphlets, cartoons, opinion pieces, snaps and Hansard. In a Brexitless Britain, our political pages would have plodded along, chronicling the usual petty party political squabbles, resignations of people we’d never heard of and


accounts of past misdemeanours. But, thanks to the Big B, politics has livened up no end. Instead of the ‘same old’, we’ve been treated to tottering governments, hounded premiers, imploding parties and emerging if unconvincing Machiavellis. We’ve been offered the practically unique opportunity of reporting, photographing and commenting upon the transformation of a nation from a respected international mover-and- shaker into a sideshow of eccentricity – a metamorphosis from Cool Britannia to global song-and-dance performer. What luck. And how manfully we journalists


have faced up to a new set of challenges. Pre-Brexit, the source of our stories was action. It was the reporter’s first, second and final interrogation: “What are you going to do about it?”, “What will you do next?” or “What will change?” All, you will note, ‘doing words’. Verbs. To our credit, we moved seamlessly


into the era of the dispensable verb. We didn’t need action! Faced with weeks and months of total inertia, we revised our criteria for a story. We made the news ‘Nothing is happening!’ and carried on interviewing people, attributing quotes, issuing releases and snapping images of mass indolence. Our coverage became even more frantic during seasons of slothful stagnation. It’s been also been a shot in the arm,


or at least a Gove up the nose, for our Westminster correspondents. For years, they have noted parliament’s amiable and ritual shambles: side A of the House baying at side B; honourable members delivering rebukes in


sentences longer than the US would like to give Assange; and order papers waved like enthusiasts welcoming the Trump visit. For years, Lobby hacks have had to


watch while chamber proceedings moved at a snail’s pace. Stale and tired, they were shadows of the fresh-faced youths who first crossed Central Lobby. Then – thanks to Brexit – new vistas


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shone forth! The left-right, government- opposition yeas-and-nays became small beer compared with the carnage members of the same side wrought upon each other. In place of the gentlefolk scoring debating points, we had back-stabbings of Shakespearian proportions. We had full-blown traitors forming fringe parties, some chucking in their lot with three parties in as many months, leaders for whom every fresh day was the Ides of March and even the occasional seething interfamily rivalry. Indeed, times were good. Without Brexit, senior reporters


The left-right yeas-and-nays were small beer compared with the carnage members of the same side wrought on each other


would have been despatched to beef up stories about Diane Abbott being pictured sipping a can of shandy on a train; cover scandals like the Brighton Half Marathon being 146 metres short; or thrilling at the tracing of the remains of the Elephant Man. Instead, Brexit has: given us tales of


the dwindling darling buddies of May; seen Tory leadership elections starting with a cast of thousands; led to horror stories about bacon smuggling over a new Irish border; raised the prospect of a revamping of Hadrian’s Wall; and forecast a wine-less Albion. All gist to the bedlam, I say. Onward Brexit! In our trade, you can’t get enough of a bad thing.


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