Cheese Grater Issue 70: Brexit Edition

2 Jan 31st 2020

The Cheese Grater’s Brexit Celebration

Brexit TV

By Isobel Macleod There was something odd about Netflix’s medievalist flick, The King – and I’m not talking about Timothée Chalamet’s English accent, because that was nothing short of iconic. I’m not even talking about Robert Pattinson’s French accent! (Which definitely was not iconic. Not even iconique).

No, there was something slightly odd – dare I say, icky – about feeling distinctly as if I was being transported back in time to the world of 70s nostalgia. Here is noble young Hal, all the coldness Shakespeare gave his character neatly forgotten; and on the other side of the battlefield… ah yes, there’s the walking Blackadder joke: lewd and depraved Dauphin Louis. And he gets duly kicked back across the channel back where he belongs, the sceptered isle defended from its pesky continental threat. It was all so “us” and “them”, so “the Western Front’s about as likely to move as a Frenchman living next to a brothel”, so completely irrelevant to the connected world we now live in – except that, of course, a French enemy and a glorified British past peddle very nicely the Brexit narrative.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years to our own Queen Liz and what do we see but Olivia Coleman’s bravely quivering face on our Netflix home pages, and as the show moves into the era that Brexiteers often hark back to as their (God knows why) Halycon days, one really might start to question why one is watching a show that tells the past through the eyes of the monarchy… one. As Callum Alexander Scott wrote in the Guardian, “it is well understood that Brexit is a project imbued with imperial nostalgia”, and The Crown is most certainly part of the “wave of nostalgic television shows” he sees emerging. This nostalgia fuels “nationalistic pride” and “Brexit fan-

tasies”; and it harks back not only to Empire days, but also, of course, THE WAR. I mean, we talk about American self-mythologising, but has America ever produced a show so cloyingingly self-congratulatory as ‘The Great British Bake Off’? What is the Declaration of Independence to the Declaration of “we potter around the countryside in Cath Kidston shirts and whisper witty jokes to each other and that is all”? If that is not the crème de la crème (sorry) of British self-delusion, then I don’t know what is.

The UK has this image of itself as the brave English King set against evil France. We’re Hal, and the whole time we were in the EU we were looking moodily around at Belgium, Germany and Spain like “I know you all, and will awhile uphold the unyoked humour of your idleness.” But herein we do not imitate the sun – if we are being wondered at, it’s not because we’ve broken

through any base contagious clouds. It’s because Theresa May asked for about 70 extensions and seesawed onstage to ABBA at her party conference. I mean does anyone actually know what’s going on over here?

Don’t get me wrong. I would love nothing more than to watch a show about some World War One privates who go to France and blow up the Dauphin and then come back laden with that sexy British PTSD (although of course, no sex please) so they can have tea and cakes and slap each other on the back with tears in their eyes, mumbling things like “stiff upper lip” and “get your stinking chin up, you barmy old codger” (?). That said, I can’t help but think that if we do have another referendum and end up crawling back to the EU with arms outstretched, Donald Tusk will simply yeet us with an “I know thee not, old man.” Touché, we shall have to say.

The Cheese Grater’s Brexit Celebration

Jan 31st 2020 3

Brexit Winners and Losers It’s been a long road to get here, but let’s take a look back across the many winners & losers from the last 3 years.

Ken Clarke For much of his career Ken was a lonely soul, what with him being the only likeable Tory MP and all. More recently father Ken has been making friends, and recklessly roaming around the commons and infecting some 20 other MPs with a career-ending illness known as ‘having a spine’. His service to parliament was kindly repaid with his firing. Happy retirement Ken, you glorious old bastard.

All MEPs In a stroke of real sad-sackery, MEPs sang a tearful Auld Lang Syne yesterday as they voted through the withdrawal agreement, in what resembled a less diverse remake of ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing’. I think we can all agree that only LOSERS would be moved to tears at such a lame occurrence as this.

Amirite guys? Haha, LAME! Yeah, I cried too, whatever, move on.

Brexit Party What could be more losery than singing Auld Lang Syne and bursting into tears on your last day of work? Bri-

tian’s most-popular teal arrow wielders had the answer - getting homophobic, human-rotting-potato Anne Widdecombe to defiantly wave a Union Jack whilst trying to pull a smug face that made it look like she’d just shat herself.

Nigel Farage After years of trying, Mr ‘Easy Win in South Thanet’ has finally done himself out of a job. In doing so he’s also done himself out of a wife, which it would be cruel to joke about... if in doing so he hadn’t also done himself out of German citizenship. Hahahahahaha, you’re stuck here with the rest of us, you prick.

The PM Captain High Attention Span and former- OH LOOK A BUS. Boris Johnson has done himself proud, selling off everything he ever believed in (not a lot) for political gain. He has power! The problem now for Britain’s Best-loved Bicycle Bastard is that he has to actually do something with it, and he’s got absolutely no idea- OH LOOK SOME BOOBIES. So, those were the winners and losers of this 3 year long mess. What’s that?

They were all losers? Yeah. We’re all losers. That’s the fucking point.

Totally Unbiased Brexit Stickers Cut out and keep! (Stickiness not included)

Society Bitch What with this being a Brexit issue and all, you may have made the oh so-rash assumption that Soc Bitch would be taking a break from her almighty reign of terror, but alas you were wrong. Soc Bitch is back and with more baseless slander than ever before as we play wHIcH SuUCl clUbS AnD SOCieTieS SeeM LiKE ThEY VOtEd FoR BrEXiT mAyBE?!

1) Men’s Rubgy. I mean, obviously.

Much like UKIP, they’ve fallen from relevance in recent years, but they’re definitely still probably entirely mostly to blame for this, as well as all other world ills.

2) UCL Bellringing Circle. Brexit was in fact initiated by the bellend enthusiast community, knowing full well that an act of stupidly patriotic national sabotage spearheaded by the UK’s gentle sleepwalk into populism would be the only chance they would get to hear Big Ben’s bongs once more.

3) UCL Lib Dems. Soc Bitch has long been suspicious of the LDs, and has heard entirely false information on a fictional grapevine that the society long-ago descended into a mere vehicle for kinky Brexit-fetishising fantasy role play.

4)UCL Estates. Not actually a society, but alongside Dyson and Wetherspoons, UCL Estates signed a letter to the government declaring that EU regulations on ‘keeping the doors to IOE open’ and ‘not being a dick’ were preventing them from operating at their most efficient. Good lord what fresh hell are we in for now.

5) The Cheese Grater Magazine Society. Yeah, that’s right. Surprise, bitch.

Contributors to this issue: Adam Bloss, Darcy Bounsall, Sam Dodgshon, Riddi Kanetkar, Suzy Kingston, Isobel Macleod, Sophia Robinson, Weronika Strzyzynska

4 Jan 31st 2020 The Cheese Grater

UCL Cheese Grater Magazine Society President—Darcy Bounsall president@cheesegratermagazine.org Co-Editors—Suzy Kingston and Weronika Strzyzynska editor@cheesegratermagazine.org Investigations Editor—Sophia Robinson investigations@cheesegratermagazine.org Humour Editor—Sam Dodgshon humour@cheesegratermagazine.org Online Editor—Riddi Kanetkar online@cheesegratermagazine.org Graphics Editor—Isobel Macleod © Students’ Union UCL, 25 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0AY. Views expressed herein are not necessarily those of SU UCL or the editors.