The contradictions of the Brexit era confound comedy. Having publicly extolled the virtues of Northern Ireland’s access to the single market on Tuesday, Rishi Sunak was momentarily so engorged by exciting economics he forgot the ideological implications of what he was saying, while Tory advisers chewed off their feet backstage. The Tory Brexiter Sunak is now a more enthusiastic supporter of the EU than the Labour remainer Keir Starmer. An unrepentant remainer until I die, do I now vote Tory? Was this the secret Tory plan all along?
Brexit has reversed the polarities of Sunak’s and Starmer’s brains. It’s like Face/Off, where John Travolta becomes Nicolas Cage and Nicolas Cage becomes John Travolta, but with the exciting martial arts sequences replaced by Sunak, who went to prep school and has the personal GDP of a South American dictatorship, accusing grammar-school grafter Starmer, whose dad was a toolmaker, of being a north London metropolitan elitist. Again.
