How to keep Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest

I am a devout fan of the Eurovision Song Contest. This puts me at odds with other members of the Reaction team, some of whom believe that the biggest benefit of Brexit will be no longer having to compete in the annual European (kinda) musical (again, kinda) extravaganza. But I have always loved it – the glitz, the cheesiness, the petty national politics masquerading as a talent contest. So forget the Single Market, forget the ECJ – the risk of the UK losing its automatic place in the final (regardless of the quality of our offerings) has been a major source of anxiety for me since June 23rd. But if our negotiators can get a deal for the City of London, I have faith in their ability to get us a deal for Eurovision. And after last weekend’s performance, taking into account the tone of the talks on both sides, here’s how I envisage the negotiations going down…

“Look Jean-Claude. We invented it. It’s ours. And if you lot don’t pay us €200 billion (going up to €300 billion next week), we will just take it away with us. No more Graham Norton and snide one liners. No transition. A cliff edge. Imagine the chaos.

We will be okay. We put the Aussies and other non-Europeans (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Israel) in the European Song Contest for precisely this reason. We will call it the Not The Eurovision Song Contest. Or, if they won’t come along (the Aussies can be difficult), we will just sing by ourselves. That way we will win more often.

(Yes, we know we will also lose more often – no cake and eat it. But we lose most of the time now anyway so we will be better off overall ).

We did okay last night – we never have any friends in the voting so we usually come last but yesterday we secured a strong and stable 15th place that works for everybody. A sign that Brexit is benefiting us already.”