Brow Beat

John Oliver Makes the Case Against Brexit While Insulting Europe As Much As Possible

On Sunday night’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver dove deep into the implications of the upcoming vote in Great Britain over leaving the European Union, or Brexit. One by one, Oliver tears into disingenuous justifications given by pro-Brexit campaigners, from incorrect math to a list of supposed regulations on pillows that included laws about breakfast cereal and automobile manufacturers. (Side note: did you know that there is a feature-length pro-Brexit documentary called Brexit: The Movie, available to watch for free online? And that its voiceover begins, weirdly, “We the people?”)

Oliver’s profile of the Brexit-supporting UKIP party is nearly enough to make the anti-Brexit case on its own, but he acknowledges the appeal of the pro-Brexit side.

On some level, I kind of understand, because there is an innate British desire to tell Europe to go fuck itself. I feel it, too!

So to scratch that itch without doing anything as drastic as leaving the EU, Oliver presented a five-man choir performing a song that, as he put it, “both relentlessly insults Europe and quietly acknowledges how lost we’d be without it.” It seems unlikely that the strained relationship between Great Britain and the mainland will be resolved by a song that urges Europe to “eat our spotted dicks,” but at this point, it certainly can’t hurt.