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The Labour-voting Guardian reader’s guide to having to love Brexit now

LIBERAL Remainer who unfailingly votes Labour? Thanks to Keir Starmer’s hard line on the EU, you’re a Brexiter now. Here’s how to modify your behaviour: 

Get into xenophobia

Got some Brie in the fridge? That’s ‘coward’s cheese’. Chorizo? ‘Lazy siesta sausage’ more likely. Being a tedious, unfunny xenophobe will feel alien at first, but you’ll know you’ve getting it when you instinctively say to your Bosch washing machine ‘Remember Dresden?’

Talk absolute shit

Claim immigrants are coming here to steal jobs while living it up on benefits. When an educated chum points out the obvious contradiction, snort: ‘There’s too many of them. End of.’ You’re a Brexiter now, so that means you’ve won the argument.

Give your support to Starmer in person

Starmer meets the public a fair bit due to by-elections and hanging out in Red Wall seats, so persevere until you get chance to tell him ‘Thank God you’re deporting all the bloody Muslims, Sir Keir!’. He’ll really appreciate your support, especially with TV cameras following him all the time.

Ditch all subtitled DVDs

Jules et Jim and The Seventh Seal can go to Scope. There are only two true masterpieces of cinema: Escape to Victory and The Dam Busters. They’ve even tried to ruin that, by removing a scene with Guy Gibson’s black dog because it was named something that was perfectly okay at the time. Snowflakes.

Act like Brexit saved your job

If not for the referendum, Boris and of course Nigel, you’d be on the streets now. Migrants would have had your job as a quantity surveyor. To prove it, invent an anecdote about a bloke you know at the Arts Council who says they only interview Albanians now. It’s lying bullshit, but that’s Brexit.

Rebook your holiday

Tuscany is not suitable for you now. There are no English pubs, and no mini-marts to buy Pot Noodles and McVitie’s Digestives. Going to a shithole like that is treachery.

Make a twat of yourself on LBC

You’re not a true Brexiter until you’ve humiliated yourself on LBC, rambling inarticulately about why we leave the EU. If you find yourself making a point coherently, leap into surreal xenophobia like ‘I just don’t want my kids growing up speaking Esperanto.’

Plaster your Prius with St George flags

Be patriotic not by making an actual sacrifice for your country, but by having flags all over your car and house. Support England at all times – attend your daughter’s piano recital in an England shirt – and when they lose, treat it as a personal loss, not a conversational minefield you have to bluff your way through with members of the proletariat.

Your teenage rock band could have made it, and other lies you've told yourself so often you believe them

SPENT so long repeating total bullshit that you’re now convinced it’s true and outraged if you’re doubted? None of these have any basis in fact: 

Your teenage rock band could have made it

You guys were brilliant. You could have been the next Radiohead, but you were so far ahead of your time you never got signed. Except none of you could play in time, or in tune, and Tom was only the singer so you could rehearse in his home granny annexe. Ever listen to your demo tapes?

You’re six feet tall

Well, near enough. If you don’t slouch. You’re taller than some other men who make the same claim, certainly. The truth is you’re a distinctly average five foot ten, but nobody’s challenged you on it for years so you’re imagining you’re getting away with it.

You could handle yourself in a fight

You’ve never had a fight, but you’ve seen a lot of fights in films. A set of moves – chop, throw, fork to the eyes – is meticulously rehearsed in your mind every time you’re cut off in traffic. In reality, you’d be shocked to find being hit really hurts.

You’ve incredibly funny

In any social situation you’re the most hilarious one around, even if your transgressive comedic asides are a little bit out there for some. Easily the equal of those Oxbridge Mock The Week types. Or, what you mistake for genuine mirth at your repetitive, offensive shite is merely polite.

You were gorgeous when you were younger

If only you’d realised, when beset with the callow insecurities of youth, how good-looking you were. You could have had your pick of sexual partners if you’d had the courage to approach them. Threesomes every night, you imagine. No. You looked like you do now. Only younger.

They couldn’t run this place without you

Shouldering your daily burdens, you think about what a mess the office would collapse into without you. Without your intimate knowledge of the malfunctioning database and your web of contacts, the business would go bust in a fortnight. This theory will be tested when you’re made redundant any day now.

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