Quote of the day

"So Brexit means Brexit means Britain leaving the EU. ... We will be creating beacons and roundtables of organisations. There will be challenges but these are opportunities and everything will basically be fine once we've got round to thinking about it with the brightest and best minds in Whitehall, though obviously there can be no room for complacency."

Thanks to Brexit minister David Davis for setting my mind at ease and explaining the government's carefully considered and exhaustively detailed strategy for managing the process of withdrawing from the EU.

In one short bit of waffle, Davis managed to utter meaningless tautologies ("Brexit means Brexit"), spout bullshit buzzwords with the same earnestness and lack of self-consciousness as The Thick Of It's Stewart Pearson ("creating beacons and roundtables of organisations"), lapse into the language of bad job adverts/applications ("challenges" and "opportunities") and make an attempt at reassurance that couldn't be any less reassuring ("everything will basically be fine"). It's quite an achievement.

In fairness to Davis, he was only really taking his cue from his prime minister, who herself told a press conference at the G20 summit: "The reason I've been saying Brexit means Brexit is precisely because it means it does."

For a sharper skewering of all this waffle and linguistic obfuscation, here's John Crace writing for the Guardian.

(Thanks to Marc for the link.)