Brexit Debate Reopened For Third Time This Decade, Britain Cited As "Only Nation Capable Of Arguing With A Decision It Already Made"

Britain has successfully reopened the Brexit debate, an achievement last managed in 2019 and widely believed by constitutional historians to be physically impossible without specialist equipment.

The reopening began on Wednesday when the Prime Minister suggested that rejoining the European Union was among the options a government might conceivably look at, a sentence so carefully constructed that two sub-editors reportedly required a lie down. By Thursday morning Nigel Farage had declared it the greatest gift of his career, described himself as back in the debate, and was last seen somewhere in South Yorkshire looking, in his own estimation, tanned.

"I have waited ten years for this," Farage told supporters, who cheered in a manner suggesting they had also waited ten years for this and had kept the leaflets. "Thank you, Andy, if you're watching." Andy Burnham was not watching. Andy Burnham was, according to people close to him, looking at a tram timetable with the expression of a man who has just remembered what he said out loud.

The effect on the national mood was immediate. Within four hours, 61 per cent of the public reported feeling exactly as they felt in 2016, 22 per cent reported feeling worse, and the remaining 17 per cent reported having emigrated internally, which is understood to mean they now live in the shed.

Polling is already being disputed with the enthusiasm of men who have missed disputing polling. One survey suggesting most of the country would prefer to rejoin was dismissed on the grounds that respondents had not been told how much it would cost, and a counter-survey suggesting the opposite was dismissed on the grounds that respondents had been told how much it would cost in a tone of voice. A third survey asked people whether they would like the argument to stop, and 94 per cent said yes, at which point the survey was abandoned for being unhelpful.

The language itself has begun to misbehave. The word "flank" has been used 1,400 times since Wednesday lunchtime, up from a baseline of roughly nine. "Red wall" has been deployed so frequently that bricklayers have asked for it back. A correspondent for a rival outlet described the week as "a reckoning", which, on inspection, meant a man gave a speech at a racecourse and some people clapped.

Timing, as ever, is everything. The debate has returned precisely as the country prepares for Harvest Festival, the one weekend of the year when the nation is asked to look honestly at what it has stored up, bring it to the front, and admit how old it is. Parish halls across Britain this weekend will receive donations of tinned goods that have outlived three prime ministers, two referendums and one entire political party, and in several cases the tins will be older than the arguments being made about them.

"There is a moral here and I intend not to learn it," said one Westminster figure, speaking on condition that we described him as a senior source, which he then clarified meant we should write "senior source" and he would handle the rest. "A nation that keeps something unopened for ten years and then opens it anyway in front of everyone is not a nation in decline. It is a nation with an appetite."

Reform's rally in Doncaster had been built around the theme of the first 100 days of government, a figure the party has declined to say 100 days from when. Asked to clarify, a spokesman said the 100 days would begin on day one, which was accepted by the room as a complete answer and is, to be fair to him, difficult to falsify.

Meanwhile, the second referendum nobody has called has already acquired a slogan, two rival logos and a man outside a shopping centre with a laminated sign reading simply "AGAIN". He declined to elaborate. The paper is honouring his position by printing it in full.

Economists have warned that reopening the Brexit debate could cost the economy up to eleventy billion pounds, a figure arrived at by taking the real number and adding a syllable so that people would read the sentence. They have also warned that not reopening it would cost roughly the same, and that the only genuinely cost-free option available to the United Kingdom is to say nothing for eighteen months, which has been ruled out on the grounds that it is not available in this country.

By Thursday evening the argument had achieved what commentators are calling full self-sustaining operation, in which it no longer requires an event, a policy or a vote to continue, and runs purely on people saying the word "Brexit" at each other on breakfast television. At time of going to press the debate was scheduled to run until roughly 2041, with a short break for Christmas and a longer one for whenever somebody mentions fish.