Thank god. I was just starting to think that this whole Brexit thing had gone off the rails
Chancellor Philip Hammond will announce a special Brexit 50p coin as part of Monday’s budget speech.
If there’s one thing that will calm the substantial discontent in the Tory party over Brexit, it’s a brand new, shiny-silver coin they can look at and coo and fight over like demented magpies.
The new seven-sided piece is set to enter circulation on March 29 next year, the date Britain stumbles out of the EU like a drunk after last orders and plonks itself face-first in the nearest pavement puddle as passers-by carefully tiptoe around. Oh look, there’s Denmark looking at us distastefully and tutting whilst they wait for their taxi home. There’s Spain, putting out a cigarette and tucking a single €5 note into our sodden coat pocket.
According to The Sun, who claim it is a monumental victory for their newspaper, the announcement of a design on a piece of currency you can’t currently buy a Twix with, yes, well-done lads, fucking bravo, the coin will feature the Queen’s head (obviously, obviously it will feature the Queen’s head, you cretins) and the date 29 March 2019.
On the reverse, without a shred nor a drop of irony, will be the phrase “Friendship with all nations”.
Join me now, screaming into the nearest pillow with a Union Jack design.
Presumably the rejected designs for the Brexit coin – a Missing Persons poster of David Cameron, Boris Johnson eating out of a garbage bin like a feral badger, Jacob Rees-Mogg chuckling ferociously at a small homeless child – didn’t quite align with Hammond’s ‘positive signal’ he wanted to send out to the world.
Which makes sense. There’s nothing like reassuring everyone that you’re fine, that absolutely everything is ok, honestly, it’s all good at our end, you don’t need to worry about us, like sticking “friendship with all nations” on the front of a coin.
It’s a bit like someone you know having a bit of a falling out in the friendship group and shunning themselves off from the rest of the squad. You’re concerned, so naturally, you go round to visit. To check everything is ok. Imagine this person then answers by walking out in their dressing gown and screaming the lyrics to ‘Hey Jude’ in your face, handing you a Christmas card (it is June) before telling you to please come and visit again soon and slamming the door, which isn’t a door but actually just a binbag duct taped to top of the frame and hanging down like a curtain.
Would you then, maybe, be more concerned, or would you actually think, yeah, well, I was a bit worried for my friend, but not it definitely appears that they have absolutely everything in order and are completely and totally fine!
There might not be anything more British than carving our ‘friendship with all nations’ on the front of a coin that nobody else in the world will see unless they are already trapped on our rainsoaked prison island, trying to scramble together enough change to buy a pint of Ruddles in a Wetherspoons.
A coin. A friendship coin. A very literal token of international cooperation to be passed around exclusively in the UK. Plopped into crumbling styrofoam cups along the high street, falling down the backs of our rotting, cushionless sofas here and nowhere else.
That is our prize, the fatted Brexit calf with blue passport trimmings, that is our recompense for the uncertainty of the last two years and to mark the grand occasion, the big hoopla, of Britain finally leaving the EU.
But then again, it is very shiny. Oooooo.
