Brexitwatch: Leave Planet Earth! How the Tories' "stop the boats" slogans evolved 2016-30

The Conservatives pretended, with some success, that the best way of improving the quality of life for the British people was to stop those so desperate that they had abandoned their homes and travelled thousands of miles in constant danger, from trying to reach our country. This seemed all the more bizarre as we had a desperate shortage of workers.

As each initiative to 'stop the boats' failed, the Tories' slogans evolved:

2016 Vote Brexit to STOP THE BOATS

2023 Quit the ECHR to STOP THE BOATS

2030 Leave Planet Earth to STOP THE BOATS

Leaving the EU failed. Treating its member countries as our enemies proved not to be a good way of getting the help we desperately needed from them if we wanted to 'stop the boats'. Leaving the ECHR was, if anything, even more disastrous, as it resulted in Britain becoming a pariah nation with its trade agreement with the EU torn up. The Conservatives talked up a new deal with North Korea as an alternative, but when mutual trade in its first year amounted to only £22.30, even some Tories began to have doubts. Leaving the ECHR also failed to 'stop the boats'.

The 'Leave Planet Earth' scheme was originally floated by the NatCons, or National Conservatives who were extreme right wingers even by Tory standards, and rejected by the party leadership, but by 2030 it had become official policy in spite of its obvious practical difficulties. Former prime minister Boris Johnson dismissed its critics as 'the woke Green liberal elite Remoaner Blob.'

During the early 2020s, incidentally, the Conservative government kept referring to those trying to seek asylum in the UK as 'illegal immigrants'. They were not, because it was not illegal to seek asylum, and the civil service refused to adopt this mendacious terminology, referring instead on official government websites to 'irregular immigration'.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE!! Sunak's secret global warming speech to Tory MPs!

Stop the boats! Stop the ULEZ! Stop the Green Cr*p! Stop the Woke Climate Blob!

That's how we'll win the next General Election!

Now, of course, saving the world from frying and ensuring our children and grandchildren have a planet to live on involves making some tough choices, and I've made them! I've taken the tough decision to delay all the action we Tories promised we would take to fight global warming! We know saving the planet is important, it's just that saving my job and the job of Tory MPs is more important!

I've also taken the incredibly tough decision to scrap a whole lot of laws that don't exist! 

Now, we can't have action to fight global warming making people in Britain poorer. That's Brexit's job!

And speaking of Brexit, I know some of you have been concerned that my promise to be honest about global warming means that I might start being honest about Brexit! Don't worry. There'll be no nonsense of that kind! And, by the way, I'm not really being honest about global warming either! There will be no backsliding from the Conservative policy of lying whenever it's convenient.

So Stop the Boats, Stop the Ulez and we Tories can rule for another five years, or until the end of the world, whichever comes sooner.