Susan Morrison: With friends like these, EU needs enemies?

IT'S a wonder Europe didn't sling us out over those 40-odd years.

Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher's Euro scepticism helped end her career. Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

It can’t have been easy, sitting about at a 1980s summit, just waiting for Madame Thatcher to scuttle in with that famous sideways crab dance to handbag each and every one of them individually.

Helmut Kohl always looked a tad nervy around the Iron Lady. No wonder. There was always the possibility that Maggie had a slew of SAS lurking on a balcony, ready to abseil in to make a definite point during a particularly testy negotiation.

Later on, they had to deal with Regular Bloke Tony, who always struck me as a vicar missing a church, bleating away about social justice in French, while sleazing up to Silvio Berlusconi.

On top of that they had the sunnier aspects of Gordon Brown glaring at them, demanding concessions, rebates, money off offers and, for all I know, a free two-week Costa del Sol holiday for every Sun reader.

Incidentally, you’re not telling me that wouldn’t have swung it for Remain if that had been on the table.

There must have been moments, when they glanced at the door and whispered like partygoers with an unwelcome guest. Let’s just ask them to leave. France can run around with the hoover and Germany can start doing the washing up. Perhaps they’ll take the hint.

After all, what’s the UK ever done for us? Apart from constantly whinge like toddlers on a long car journey, that is?

A quick glance at the favoured reading material of Little England and you’d have seen the constant drum beat of blame and lies.

Charming fairy tales about ‘faceless Eurocrats’ demanding curve ratios for bananas, insisting we rename Bombay Mix to Mumbai mix and banning the sale of haggis to the US.

Actually, as Ruth Davidson pointed out to Boris, it wasn’t the EU, but our American cousins themselves who’ve chosen to protect their population from the dangers of rampant haggis on the streets.

Oddly, they feel more relaxed about letting anyone buy an assault rifle.

Those faceless Eurocrats must have sighed, as they planned investment drives to get possible jobs into decimated Welsh valleys, funding streams for Cornwall or calculated subsidies to Yorkshire farmers, what have the British ever done for us?

History has a warning for Boris the career assassin

So now Mr Cameron , the Man Who Broke Britain, has gone and Mr Johnson looks forward to the day when he can measure up for new curtains in Number 10.

He doesn’t look terribly pleased, does he? Mind you, he’s always looked a bit like a dissolute children’s party entertainer, which is apt, because Gove daily resembles a slowly deflating balloon animal.

The Tories may give him the bone he’s been worrying away at for all this time, but there are those of us old enough to remember Michael Heseltine, the Tarzan of the Tory party.

Heseltine started the process that culminated in the political assassination of Margaret Thatcher’s career.

Many folk were glad to see Maggie leave, including the Tory grandees who quietly trooped in to tell her the gig was up, but those men in suits had and have an odd view of loyalty, and didn’t take kindly to Mr Hesletine.

They were not keen on rewarding the assassin.

Tarzan never did lead the Tories, so don’t be surprised, Boris, if they start to plot against you.

Now, where’s that Theresa May been all these weeks?

Nanny Nicola will look after us

It was like that moment in Towering Inferno, when Paul Newman raises his hands, calms the hysteria and outlines his rescue plan. Or was it Steve McQueen? You get the idea.

The morning after, Westminster registered DefCon 2 on the panic meter. Cameron hit the ejector button, Boris bumbled about on an epic scale, Gove tried to vanish into the wallpaper and Farage made the most appalling statements about this decision being taken without a shot being fired.

There was only one politician who actually seemed to know what to say and do, and that was Nicola Sturgeon.

When the nation burst into tears and snotters, Nicola stepped smartly forward, took out a hanky, held it to our noses and said ‘blow’.

So we did, at least here in Scotland, and started trying to clean up the mess.

Numpty Trump has a wild time

And then, just when things couldn’t get weirder, Donald Trump decided to land on us.

The Human Cheesy Wotsit sent out a tweet that said the ‘Place is going wild over the vote’, in an area that voted 62% to remain.

Firstly, it does make me wonder what on earth The Donald’s idea of ‘going wild’ is, since the photos I’ve seen are of an empty golf course, a lone piper and protesters waving Mexican flags at him.

And secondly, I have rarely been so proud of our affinity with language. The creative insults hurled at Trump are poetic.

The word ‘numpty’ has finally gone global.