Brexit

That is one of those lazy neologisms for people who aren’t really very clever with words: the sort of people who say ‘Hi!’ instead of ‘Hello!’ and pronounce ‘Communist’ ‘Commernist’. It means, of course, Britain’s possible imminent leaving of the common market. I promise to talk only about the more amusingly lunatic aspects of this deeply dull subject.

Travellers between France and England by the tunnel or the ferry may have been disconcerted by the fact that as one leaves England for France, one’s passport is checked, before entry to the tunnel or ferry, by French immigration officers rather than English ones. And in Calais, it is English officers who look at one’s passport. This is done so that anyone who doesn’t have the ‘right’ to make the crossing is stopped before even trying, so that the authorities in the country of arrival don’t have the bother of sending people who have come all the way over all the way back.

Now. The sort of people who want Britain to leave the common market are often the sort of ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ types who are always moaning about Britain being ruled by ‘A bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels’, and who believe Britain is flooded with immigrants ‘stealing our jobs’ and no doubt raping our daughters, while living in luxurious mansions provided by social services at the good honest law-abiding British taxpayers’ expense.

So the announcement today by France that if Britain does leave the common market then that reciprocal immigration border arrangement will end, and so the thousands of people (some of them with dark skins!) who are hanging around Calais hoping to find a way to get across to England will all be told by the French authorities  ‘Off you go chaps, get on the ferries or through the tunnel, we don’t mind’ is likely, as they say, to set the cat among the pigeons.