By confirming that Britain is not Norway Theresa May scotched claims this government is clueless

If anything typifies the contemptible unmanliness of the Italians it is the effeminacy with which they choose to name their cities.

It speaks volumes that no official from the EU was in attendance for what they knew would be quite literally an insertion of cold, British steel up the rectum and, of course, bizarre how uncongenial they would find such a prospect.

Thankfully, the press were in attendance en masse – the cycling correspondent of the Luxembourg Journal and an intern from the Warrington Gazette among them to hear what would be the most important address from a British leader since Queen Elizabeth’s speech at Tilbury, inspiring the British to say to the Spanish Armada “This – slap on head.”

What they and dozens upon dozens of residents at nursing homes across the length and breadth of the UK watching the rolling BBC News 24 channel was truly momentous. Here are the key points, as I understood them.

BRITAIN IS NOT NORWAY. If there were doubts about this, they have been scotched. Norway, it is now very clear, is Norway. Britain, by contrast, is Britain. Not Norway. It was stirring indeed to hear this assertion made in such bold, unambiguous terms.

WE WILL PAY YOU YOUR BLOOD MONEY, BUT ONLY IN POUNDS STERLING. This was an especially cunning ploy. For by the time this ridiculous payment is due, we will also have carried out to the full our strategy of running down the pound till it is worth about a lira or a pre-war Deutschmark. Here’s a wheelbarrow of bugger all, Jean-Claude!

AN ORDERLY PERIOD OF TRANSITION TO ASSIST EUROPE THROUGH OUR DEPARTURE FROM IT. Let us face it, if we were to leave the EU next week, the continent would be plunged into crisis, with refugees stampeding across the continent to flee the economic chaos Brexit had visited upon them, taking to small boats, swimming the channel in order to reach the UK. The East Coast has taken a pounding from migrants as it is, swarming unwantedly through our fruit farms like locusts. Best give them time to make get used to our absence.

DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IRELAND OF SOME SORT, OR NOT. This is a vanishingly trivial aspect of this affair, compared to say, our freedom to determine what type of wood we use for our trowel handles without fear of red tape. However, it is clear from the appropriate level of thought the Government have put into this that the Irish are all much of a muchness when all is said and done; if they get angry about whatever it is they seem to be angry about and wish to hurl potatoes at us, they will find a large body of water provided by God Almighty to thwart them. There will of course, have to be borders erected to keep out the Scottish and the Welsh.

TRADE IN BOILED BEEF, SPOTTED DICK AND OTHER EXPORTED COMESTIBLES. Mrs May made it perfectly clear that we would be perfectly happy to carry on exporting British foodstuffs to Europeans, supplying what has always been a huge demand across the continent. However, we would no longer adhere to pernickety, fussy, health-and-safety-gone-mad EU regulations concerning out of date or scrapie-addled meat, salmonella-ridden eggs. We’ll carry on shipping you the food at a fixed price but if your stomachs aren’t strong enough to hold it down, that’s your lookout – if you’d bucked your ideas up in World War II you might have stronger constitutions.< DEFENCE POLICY. Although we intend to carry on giving European nations the Dickens of a hiding in international football tournaments, we would, in a spirit of cordiality, refrain from nuclear annihilation of our neighbours during the transitional period at least. However, we have to occasionally test these things so it would be wise for Belgium to bear in mind that they may well be asked to evacuate 500 square mile areas of their country at 24 hours notice as we fire up a missile and see where it lands. Judging by the slightly wayward trajectory of the last one, Austria might want to keep a watchful eye on the skies at the same time.

Taken in the round, then, this was no desperate, stalling, content-free address delivered to rows of empty chairs and further evidence of the government’s clueless inertia as Britain attempts to carry out the most suicidally stupid collective undertaking in its island history, in which if we shell out billions of pounds, things might just be almost as adequate as they were before. This is a government that knows its arse from its elbow. We intend to give the EU the arse. And we intend at the negotiating table to give M. Barnier and his cronies a jolly good kick up the elbow.