Toby Neal: It’s time for Le Crunch, unless that’s tomorrow

Crunch drunk?

Brexit has brought us more crunch than an orchard of Cox’s Pippins. Or French Golden Delicious, depending on your ideology.

Poor Theresa May had whole crunch weeks. But today is a crunch day. Just like all those other crunch days this week, and last week, and all those other crunch days previously over the past four years.

As the trade negotiations reach their much anticipated anti-climax, I have to warn you that there is a serious possibility that on this crunch day there could be more high drama. Yes, it could be another crunch day when nothing much happens.

So don’t panic. Well, not today anyway. Delay your panic until tomorrow, because Sunday might be the real crunch day. Unless nothing happens then too.

There again, as I am writing this in advance, there is a possibility that by the time you read this something might have happened.

But with Brexit things are always going to happen, future tense. Later today, tomorrow, next week, next month. What happens is talks, or no talks, and the prospect of more talks, or no talks.

The most worrying development of late is that Michel Barnier seems to have lost that clock of his that was ticking.

Why does he not mention it any more? Has it been swallowed by a crocodile?

My theory is that the EU has a thing about clocks and timelines, and they have confiscated Michel’s clock and are fiddling with the hands. There’s an Afghan saying: “You have the clocks, we have the time.”

Apathy

The EU, being the slowest-moving organisation in the history of the world, a giant supertanker with 27 captains on the bridge to consult about any changes in direction, ideally wants both the clocks and the time.

During the negotiations the EU’s permanent placeman Barnier has had to contend with 2.4 different British Prime Ministers and approximately 327 different UK Brexit secretaries before finally being faced with Frosty The No Man.

As for the British population, alas, poor Brexit, is this apathy I see before me? (As a muddled Shakespeare might have said.) You can see the weariness in the tired eyes above the face masks. Either that, or it’s men who realise they still have to do their Christmas shopping.

The trade talks have been difficult because Britain wants free trade and the EU is a capitalist protectionist cartel, despite Britain’s attempts to reform it after nobly admitting it to the British Empire in 1973.

There came a time though when long-suffering Britons voted in 2016 to let the EU go it alone and try to find its own way in the world.

If there is a trading deal I predict more crunch days to come, because the deal will have to be ratified by European states and could be vetoed by the French.

Or somewhere like Wallonia. Wallonia is the region of Belgium which held up the EU’s trading deal with Canada.

We keep being told that we are approaching a cliff edge, which has given me an idea. There is no more iconic cliff edge in the United Kingdom than the White Cliffs of Dover.

So here and now, let me declare December 31 National Lemming Day, when Brexiteers and Remainers alike can head to the White Cliffs of Dover in a show of unity to look across the English Channel and gather their respective thoughts of either joy or sorrow.

And it would be useful if they could afterwards continue to hang around the Dover area.

For furthermore I declare January 1 will be Adopt A Stranded Lorry Driver Day.

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At last there is the prospect that the Covid-19 nightmare will be history.

And one day historians will write the story of our present times.

In the early days of coronavirus a news report of the situation in Italy featured pages and pages of death notices in an northern Italian paper to underline the appalling toll it was taking there.

Yet in Britain, if future historians and researchers seek to assess the impact of coronavirus solely by looking through the death notices, they might come to the conclusion that there was not a single death attributable to it.

Maybe it’s a British thing, an understandable desire to protect the privacy of loved ones, because whose business is it, other than that of relatives, what somebody died of?

In any event, looking through those columns as I often do – as, sad to say, I sometimes see the names of people I interviewed or otherwise knew – I am yet to see any which say the departed person died of coronavirus, nor of any mention of it except in the context of restrictions on the funeral.

And as far as I am aware there is no bespoke charity specifically dedicated to Covid-19 research in which to leave donations in affectionate memory of loved ones claimed by this dreadful disease.