22 October 2019

Things that took your mole longer than MPs are spending scrutinising the new Brexit deal

Three days, it turns out, is not long at all.

Today, your mole wearily notes, is exactly 1,215 days since the UK voted to leave the European Union. This, I’m sure you’ll agree, is an awfully long time to be doing any one thing; particularly when that thing is arguing over the backstop.

Sick and tired of the whole shebang though your mole may be, it can’t help but feel Boris Johnson may have now gone slightly too far the other way.

1,215 entirely fruitless days in, Boris Johnson has decided enough is enough, and given MPs three days to pass his new Brexit deal, lest it be scrapped.

Three days, your mole can’t help but feeling, is not very long at all. In fact, when your mole casts its mind back to things that have taken him longer than three days to do, he can’t help becoming a little nervous about the Prime Minister’s decision.

Your mole has, for example, worn the same pair of jeans for longer than the three days that MPs are going to debate Brexit.

It has – frequently, usually even – taken your mole more than three days to reply to a WhatsApp from somebody it doesn’t actually even dislike. And don’t even get it started on its email inbox.

Your mole has spent longer than three days scrolling through the Instagram Explore page. At least it assumes. Time is a void on the Instagram Explore page.

Three days is, to your mole’s shame, far less time than it spent listening to Ed Sheeran on repeat in the summer of 2014.

Your mole spends more than three days (five actually, and working ones at that) waiting for its annual £10 birthday cheque from grandma mole (big trust issues with Royal Mail, even bigger ones with online banking) to clear.

Three days is less than the length of time your mole spent choosing a new rug – and it didn’t even particularly want a new rug.

Your mole spent much longer than three days ignoring the council, that time they kept sending letters about the bins.

What your mole is trying to say is this: three days is nothing. Surely, it feels, the government must be able to find some sort of happy medium between three days and three and a half years.