Daily Archives: Wednesday, January 30, 2019

  • Telegraph exclusive: Brits using ducks to negotiate Brexit

    The right-wing Telegraph newspaper has enjoyed a long and close relationship with the Conservative Party. So close indeed that it is often referred to as the Torygraph.

    This close relationship means that developments within the Tory Party are frequently reported first in the Telegraph.

    It is therefore no surprise that the latest developments on the state of the UK’s Brexit negotiations popped into my Twitter feed this morning with the following Telegraph headline and abstract.

    Image text reads Brexit latest news: Theresa May will meet Jeremy Corbyn today as she prepares to send a revamped negotiating teal back to Brussels.

    Yes, that’s why the negotiations have been so disastrous. They’ve been handled by ducks, or more specifically a Eurasian teal, a male specimen of which is shown below.

    Male Eurasian teal
    A top international negotiator according to the Telegraph. Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    How a duck or ducks actually managed to deal with the question of the Irish backstop remains a mystery and is probably why the Tory right wing is so obsessed with it. And quite what a revamped negotiating teal is, one could indulge in conjecture. Was it taken to some backstreet ornithologist and given the plumage of, say, an Arctic skua, together with a bit of beak remodelling?

    Please Torygraph, tell me it’s not a typo! 😀