WE shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender… our sausages.
A proposed ban on exporting sausages and processed meats from Britain to Northern Ireland, if the UK and European Union cannot agree new regulatory standards before July 1, has caused some Brexiteers to scrabble for their best war metaphors.
As opponents of the Northern Ireland Protocol would have it, we’re now entering potentially our greatest conflict - the great Sausage War.
Not since the Blackadder version of Dr Johnson realised he had forgotten to include ‘sausage’ in his Dictionary of the English Language has a few pounds of beef and pork caused such anguish.
The DUP’s Sammy Wilson was so enraged he posted a photo of himself holding a unappetising bag of raw sausages beside an old ‘Ulster is British’ poster.
“Chilled British sausages are a threat to the peace process according to the EU, Alliance, Sinn Féin and the President of the United States,” he blustered.
Sammy’s just trolling us all now isn’t he?
Of course for some, the right to chomp on processed meat cuts right to the heart of British sovereignty.
One English pig farmer told Channel 4 News that Britain should “flood Northern Ireland with sausages” - a sausage flood being one of the lesser-known Plagues of Egypt.
Tabloid debates decrying ‘barmy EU’ rules have been going on for decades.
During the UK’s membership of the bloc, the EU was blamed for everything from banning bendy bananas, forcing female bar staff not to show too much cleavage, or insisting that Bombay Mix be renamed as Mumbai Mix.
Food safety or health guidelines were often mischievously interpreted as attempts to interfere with everything from morning fry-ups to the ringing of church bells.
The fact that we’re still having these debates shows how pathetic British political discourse has become.
Reducing a complex agreement to rows about access to sausages may play well with voters used to being told that the EU is essentially a bureaucratic version of Beelzebub, but it won’t help farmers, supermarkets and consumers stuck in the middle.
I suppose if you’re Boris Johnson, used to weaseling out of everything from your marriage vows to Cobra meetings during a pandemic, then you’d be surprised that another party wants to stick to an agreement you made.
The protocol, a government spokesman claimed last week, was only meant to be loosely interpreted.
“We didn't expect the EU to take a purist approach when implementing it,” he said.
“We are working very hard to try to resolve these issues consensually.”
A purist approach? Perhaps he meant sticking to the law, something Boris Johnson’s administration finds it tricky to do.
The High Court ruled last week that Michael Gove's Cabinet Office acted unlawfully in handing out a £560,000 public contract to a consultancy firm run by ex-colleagues of his and the Prime Minister’s former adviser Dominic Cummings.
The firm, Public First, looked into public understanding of coronavirus.
The court found a failure to consider any other agency “would lead a fair-minded and informed observer to conclude that there was a real possibility, or a real danger, that the decision-maker was biased”.
There seems to be a lack of fair-minded and informed observers in government because Mr Gove has shown no indication so far that he will resign.
But why should he, when health secretary Matt Hancock was also found to have acted unlawfully and still remains in post?
A court ruled in February that Mr Hancock "breached his legal obligation" when his department did not reveal details of contracts it had signed during the pandemic.
The government said it fully recognised the "importance of transparency”, after it was found not to have been forthcoming.
Saying one thing and doing the exact opposite is the main feature of this government.
In 2019, Mr Johnson told Northern Ireland businesses to put any customs declaration forms “in the bin” because there will be “no barriers of any kind” to trade crossing the Irish Sea.
Voters should have binned him instead. With charlatans in charge, a mature solution to a complex trade dispute looks unlikely.
