Back in the summer of 2019, the Business Insider magazine ran with the headline: “Thank goodness for Boris!”

This through the looking glass image popped back into my head this week as I watched Boris Johnson’s antics over the Northern Irish Withdrawal Agreement. Boris has now extended his flippancy to international treaties. The Mad Hatter has finally taken over the tea party.

This disregard for protocol and law, for constructive negotiations, for honouring commitments and protecting peace shouldn’t surprise us given Bojo’s record on never staying true to his word as PM, as Mayor of London and well, as in everything that he ever does. His only constant is inconsistency.

Beyond the headline, however, this report told a less than edifying story on our current Prime Minister. Business Insider recounted how Johnson’s noisy No Deal Brexit shenanigans were causing ripples of joy and excitement amongst the serried ranks of hedge fund managers and currency traders.

These unacceptable faces of capitalism were rubbing their hands with glee at all the margin trading they could engage while chaos reigned during the Brexit negotiations. For these financiers, the threat of No Deal meant big profits and large transactions for their elite gang – a case of for the money and for the few.

They know how to play the game and make some dosh while the sun shines on their avaricious corner of the world. Or in other words, margin callers, calling margins.

This memory also prompted something equally depressingly familiar.

Cast your mind back to that fateful night in June 2016, when the polls closed, and a rather sombre looking Nigel Farage appeared on our screens bemoaning his and the Brexiteers probable loss to those crazy liberal Remainers at the EU referendum. Fast forward a few hours into a dawn chorus of, “by Jove, I think we’ve done it after all”, and Farage declared – surprise, surprise – a massive victory for all those true believers in the UK’s “Independence Day”.

What happened in those intervening hours is still a matter of much debate, but what is on public record is that some of Farage’s financial buddies made a massive amount of money as the markets surged, then collapsed, and then regained some speed in the subsequent trading rollercoaster.

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Filthy rich hedge fund manager Crispin Odey used an Italian expression to describe how he felt the day after the EU Referendum – he said that for him, “the morning had gold in its mouth” because he’d bet £220 million on the collapse of markets if Leave won the vote. And Leave did win after all, despite Farage’s protestations. More gold for Odey; base metal for everyone else.

Now, with this week’s Brexit revelations, I’m certain the same sections of the finance world are thanking Johnson once again. This time for the chance to line their pockets further as the UK Government plays fast and loose with international treaties, and Michel Barnier’s patience.

It all goes to show that in uncertain times, there is one solid thing we can be sure about – nothing, and I mean, absolutely nothing, is sacred for the No-Deal Brexiteers.

Not the Northern Irish Good Friday Agreement, not the global standing of the UK, not devolution or democracy, not human rights or the rule of law, not catastrophic job losses, not the UK economy heading for a shredding, nor years of deep recession, blighting the future of not just our “brightest and best” young people, but of each and every one of us who weren’t born to arbitrage and trade.

Meanwhile, as the clock ticks on to January 2021, Boris’s chums are impatient for further Brexit dividends and lashings and lashings of clotted cash.

Just a few days ago, the aforesaid Odey, incensed by the money spent so far by the UK Government supporting citizens during this unprecedented Covid pandemic, was berating politicians for their “unwillingness” to allow a recession. Such spoil sports!

He also criticised the furlough scheme, fearing a rise in inflation affecting stock markets. He couldn’t care one wee bit about people’s livelihoods, losing their jobs, their homes, their health. His bare-faced self-opportunism is almost too much to believe.

But you’d better believe it, because we are way over the rainbow and the pots of gold have already been snazzled by Boris’s pals.

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Johnson was quite happy to take Odey’s money when he donated £10,000 to Bojo’s leadership campaign last year. Now it’s the margin call. And like a good little boy, Johnson responds with the big No Deal announcement because there is no such thing as a free lunch!

If there is any justice, it won’t be long before there’s no such thing as a United Kingdom.