Monday

No one seems quite sure whether Raphael Samuel, the anti-natalist from Mumbai who plans to sue his parents for having been born without his consent, is for real or not. My natural cynicism inclines me to believe Raph is a bit of a wind-up merchant, but there are still plenty of people who are taking him seriously. The logic certainly appears somewhat fragile. Unless Raph believes that everyone but him managed, before they existed in any form, to send secret messages giving persons unknown permission to have unprotected sex, he must be baffled that no one else has got round to suing their parents. And indeed bewildered that his own parents haven’t sued their parents for being born against their will. Nor is it entirely clear what Raph hopes to get out of this. Does he want his parents to kill him? Does he want the right to officially be considered not to exist for tax purposes? Or can he just not wait to collect on his inheritance and is looking for an early financial payoff? Whichever it is, I would be encouraging his parents to get their retaliation in early by counter-suing Raph for being an ungrateful miserabilist and not the son for which they had hoped. Though that could be a dangerous precedent. There must have been plenty of times when my parents felt like suing me for damages. Not that I had any money to give them back then. As for me, I’m just looking for someone to sue for the fact that one day I am going to die.

Tuesday

In the absence of anyone in government having been able to find a Brexit deal to which parliament can agree, Lee Rotherham, a prominent Eurosceptic backed by Theresa Villiers, Norman Lamont and John Redwood, has now developed Brexit: The Board Game. Just like the real negotiations, it is strictly for masochists only because the rules are almost entirely incomprehensible. The brief summary describes the game as being about making Brexit happen, with four players taking the part of one of six factions – from no deal to rejoining the EU. Various cards are then dealt and anyone called Theresa gets to start. If no one called Theresa is playing, then the person who lives closest to Downing Street goes first. The game officially ends when a deal has been fixed, either when all empty deals cards have been filled and left unaltered for a full turn or a referendum on the deal has been won, but what happens in between is literally anyone’s guess because there is no record of anyone having ever finished the game. Not least because, as Danny Finkelstein observed, there’s no deal to which the European Research Group can ever say yes. The member of the lobby who passed it on to me never got as far as opening the lid of the box and I gave up after having a quick look through the rules. In other words, it’s as close to real life as you’re likely to get.

Wednesday

The Duchess of Cornwall has taken a bit of flak for hinting that the food may not be up to much when she and the Prince of Wales go to Cuba later this year. From my experience, she was merely telling it as it is. If you’re going to Cuba for a foodie experience, then you’ve rather missed the point. My wife and I went four years ago and we only managed a couple of good meals in the entire 10 days we were there. Even in the posher restaurants, we mostly just ate rather bland variations of rice, beans and chicken. The excitement was to be found elsewhere in the sense of dislocation. In the 1950s cars running on fumes. In the crumbling grandeur of Spanish colonial Havana. In the uneasy truce between Castro’s socialism and US capitalism. In the revolutionary memorabilia on sale in the streets. But quite the weirdest place we went to was a beach resort four hours from Havana, designated entirely for tourists. The main entertainment was an Italian C-list pop star from the 1970s with dyed black hair and too-tight trousers who did twice-nightly shows of his three greatest hits to a backing tape while his much younger wife danced out of time next to him. I’ve never been so relieved to get out of a place while on holiday. Then again, we never made it to Guantánamo.

Thursday

With just 50 days to go until 29 March and Theresa May still insisting the UK will leave the EU on time, you’d have thought the House of Commons would be rushed off its feet trying to get all the necessary legislation passed. As well as the withdrawal agreement, there are six major bills and hundreds of statutory instruments that need to get through parliament to prevent the country from grinding to a standstill. While many MPs are inherently conscientious and are anxious to sort out the situation, the government is intensely relaxed. This week, even though the leader of the Commons, Andrea Leadsom, found time for several general debates, including one on sport – A good thing or a bad thing? Discuss – parliament still closed for business in mid-afternoon on both Wednesday and Thursday as there was nothing scheduled for it to do. Madness. In the absence of anything better to do, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, along with the prime minister’s disaster-prone former joint head of staff, Nick Timothy, turned up at an event on “how to make the Tories electable”. The irony that it would be hard to find two people who had done more to make the Conservatives unelectable escaped no one but them, turning the occasion into something of a comedy show. Neither seemed to think that Brexit was a particularly big deal – certainly nothing worth more than a passing mention – while Truss was quite open about the need to have no policies whatsoever. Weirdly, she may be on to something. In a recent opinion poll on who would make the best prime minister, Theresa May came top with 40%, closely followed by Don’t Know on 39%. Jeremy Corbyn trailed in third on 19%. The prime minister is clearly doing something right. Even when her government isn’t doing anything.

Friday

After Donald Tusk’s outburst about there being a special place in hell for those who promoted Brexit without a clear plan of how to deliver it safely, Theresa May’s handshake for the cameras with Jean-Claude Juncker was decidedly frosty when the prime minister arrived in Brussels the following day. May went on to brief journalists that Tusk’s remarks were unhelpful and she expected more from EU leaders. This seemed a little harsh. Not only could Tusk be forgiven for being a little fed up with having been forced to spend the last two years of his life trying to sort out a situation that the UK didn’t have a clue how to sort out itself, it was also double standards. Ministers and MPs have been far more insulting to the EU – frequently likening it to Nazi Germany – and May has never voiced a word of criticism of them. It’s time to end the lazy mythologising of Brexit by draping it in the second world war rhetoric of Hitler and the Dunkirk spirit. Millions of people lost their lives in the war and millions more were permanently damaged by it. The day before my uncle died in 1996, my mother went to see him in hospital. He was crying and held his hands over his ears saying he could still hear the guns of Monte Cassino. Two months before my father died in 1999, he told my mother that during a Malta convoy he had been ordered to steer his ship through a crowded sea of men from another ship that had been sunk because they would be torpedoed if they stopped. The guilt had stayed with him throughout his life and he’d never been able to voice it. My mother is now 95 and in a nursing home. One of her few clear memories is of being machine-gunned by a Messerschmitt as she returned home from duty in Portsmouth harbour where she was serving as a Wren. This is the reality of the war and it’s nothing like Brexit. Brexit is an entirely avoidable act of self-harm that could at least be mitigated if politicians were prepared to put the national interest before party interest.

Digested week, digested: Britain’s special place in hell.

Donald Trump: ‘Yadayadayadawall.’ Nancy Pelosi: ‘Jesus, how much of this crap is there to go?’ Photograph: Doug Mills/AFP/Getty Images