Desperate for copy

One of the most contrived bits of banging on and on to day in the Graun.Things have been quiet lately, maybe because there are rumours of a deal, and certainly more confidence over the Government's ability to get on with something.

Faced with that, today's story is a marvel of the moral entrepreneur's opportunism, written by Charlotte Higgins...' the Guardian’s chief culture writer':

The new 50p has echoes of the first, disastrous Brexit 

This won’t be the first time a British coin has celebrated a schism with the rest of Europe

The news of a new coin clearly assumes that Brexit is a fait accompli and works on a symbolic level that must have depressed with Remainers. The Guardina spin is of course rather sour:

"Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations”: what a curious motto for the new 50p coin that the Treasury has announced will commemorate Britain’s exit from the European Union. It has an air of playground desperation about it – the neediness of a kid who, having wilfully pissed off all 27 of his friends, is slinking nervously back into the schoolyard looking for someone – anyone – to play with.

Then we warm to the main theme, based on the author's own research:

[a Roman officer] Carausius was given command of a fleet whose job was to rid the Channel of Saxon raiders. But, accused of colluding with the pirates, he was sentenced to death. His response, in about AD 286 or 287, was to seize control of the Roman province of Britannia, along with a chunk of France around Boulogne.

As usurper he struck some coins of his own:

One declared him “the restorer of Britain”, another “spirit of Britain”. Another was inscribed with words that translate as “Come, awaited one” – an adaptation of a phrase from Virgil. [Other phrases and acronyms have remained mysterious until recently] ...Carausius’s “Brexit” coins, then, can plausibly be seen as a claim that he will preside over the rebirth of Britain – coupled with a bold, not to say shameless, assertion of legitimacy.

Seasoned Graun readers, noting the textual shifters in the headlines will anticipate the closing remarks in this otherwise quite interesting story:

It strikes me that the leading Brexiteer Boris Johnson, for one, might like nothing better than to have himself minted on to a coin wearing a toga and surrounded by quotations from Virgil announcing him the harbinger of a new golden age. [And, after a quick reassertion of control by Rome]... Britain’s first Brexit, as far as we can tell, was a short-lived and unhappy affair – whatever the coins might have claimed.

The hope that Leaving will be short-lived seems to be a final consolation, like believing in a reunion in eternity at the end of a bereavement process.. A Facebook post  by a Remainer translated an article by G Verhofstadt saying, after clear signs that he is still badly hurt, that he was sure the UK would rejoin,maybe in 20 years when the new generation comes to political power.