Philippa Mingins

Monday 1st April 2019 and news-based April Fools gags are indistinguishable from regular reportage. The British are knackered having lost an hours sleep due to the clocks springing forward. None are so "knackered" however as chief government whip Julian Smith who in interview with the BBC said the current Cabinet had shown the "worst example of ill-discipline in the history of British politics" at a time when the person responsible for political discipline, is him. "I'm knackered," he reiterated. "Dealing with colleagues 24/7, sitting around the Cabinet table trying to destabilise the Prime Minister."
Elsewhere, Downing Street, the aforementioned PM Theresa May wakes up from a restless night, a single platitude in her head: "oh bother", as she remembers she still hasn't delivered Brexit. Latest from the DUP runs, should Mrs May bring her deal back a thousand times (likely), they will continue to vote against it every time.
Mean…

TODAY - Friday 29th March - was to have been The Day -  the day we Brexited from the European Union. If all had gone according to - if there had actually been a - plan.
Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg were scheduled to be there at Dover cliff edge, gardening shears at the ready, to ceremoniously sever, together, all ties with our continental neighbours. In manner of some warped version of the bride and bridegroom cutting into their first slice of wedding cake.
Former fireplace salesman, turned Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson would have led the military salute as Salvation Army brass bands from across the country, on pain of death, led a rousing rendition of "Jerusalem", followed by a blast of the Grease Megamix.
That's the news of what didn't pan out this week, so what actually did happen? We heard Nigel Farage compared to Blackadder's Field Marshall Haig when Guy Verhofstadt questioned why he was sat in European Parliament and not out on the 200 mile March…

THE QUESTION is, between Prime Minister Theresa May going into the EU Summit yesterday (Thursday) with the plan of extending Article 50 until June 30th, and her leaving the EU Summit with the news Brexit had been delayed by a mere fortnight to April 12th, what did Mrs May do to shrink the time frame to such an extent that it mimicked cash being drained through a daytime quiz show prize totaliser? As usual the answer lies not in what Mrs May did, but rather what she did not do.
Her address to EU leaders was, according to feedback, "90 minutes of nothing" as she failed to convince them she had a plan to avoid a No Deal Brexit, should her own deal, inevitably, be voted down by Parliament. An insider commented: "Asked three times what she would do if she lost the vote, she couldn't say. It was awful. Dreadful. Evasive even by her standards."
After several hours, the EU decided "she didn't have a plan so they needed to come up with one for her". They a…

BACK in 2014 Theresa May, then Home Secretary, met spoon-bending psychic Uri Geller and he predicted she would one day become Prime Minister. It also transpires he bestowed upon her the gift of hypnotism.
In a live broadcast to the nation yesterday evening (Wednesday) Mrs May took to the podium and began with the words: "You are feeling very sleepy", before this pile of drivel commenced...
"Of this I am absolutely sure; you the public have had enough. You're tired of the infighting. You're tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows. Tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit, when you have real concerns about your children's schools, our national health service, knife crime.
"You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide."
The reaction to this speech has not been kind, encapsulating as it does many flaws - namely Mrs May's extraordinary a…