The stunning news that Santa Claus may be barred from visiting Britain once we leave the EU will be seen as a crushing blow for children of all ages. So far as I can understand, the government will have to create a new system of visas for overseas visitors and Mr Claus will have to wait in the line along with fruit pickers, care workers, doctors and footballers. I don’t remember Nigel Farage telling us about this shocking possibility.
Mr Claus spends much of his year – 364 days, in fact – in Lapland, Finland, presumably assembling and wrapping presents for the children of the world. For some reason we don’t hear much about it him before and after Christmas and I have always been too “tired” on Christmas Eve to wait up for him. He always visits, though, and I follow his progress on the excellent NORAD website which, incredibly, shows live footage of Mr Claus travelling the world with his flying reindeer. (Incidentally, if you think it impossible for a reindeer to fly, just remember that in the Qu’ran the prophet Mohammad ascends to heaven on a “winged horse”, so it must be true.)
We’re okay for a couple of years because it won’t be until at least 2019 when we actually depart the EU but in the meantime I call on foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, a man never to avoid a publicity gimmick, to make transitional arrangements. The unmistakable message from the EU referendum was that the British people have had enough of migrants coming over here, taking the jobs of inferior English footballers and winning the Eurovision song contest. Once we leave the EU we will have the crackdown many desire and that will have to include poor old Santa.
Hopefully, the 32,000 extra civil servants we are about to employ (I don’t remember the Leave campaign’s “Let’s take back control by employing an additional 32k bean counters which is 9,000 more than the entire EU employs” slogan) can carve out a special deal for Mr Claus. The last thing he will want, as he flies from place to place, is to have to keep stopping to apply for a visa here, pay a tariff there and have to go through the long queues at the Border Agency and quite possibly complex veterinary rules for his reindeer.
I warned you this might happen, especially the large group of older voters who decided to take us out of the EU. Not only will the next generation be denied the opportunity to travel, work and live abroad, they might lose out on being visited by Santa Claus. I hope you “leavers” feel proud of yourselves!
(Thanks to Newsthump for giving me the idea.)
