Because Brexit is not ridiculous enough, an influential group of Conservative Brexiteers has attracted a new nickname: the Grand Wizards.
The band of powerful Tories - which includes Iain Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg - met Theresa May at her Chequers country retreat on Sunday as the Prime Minister made yet another attempt to get them to swing behind her troubled Brexit deal.
Reporting in the aftermath of the meeting and ahead of yet more crunch votes in the Commons, the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted that people are calling them by a strange new moniker.
She tweeted: “The ‘Grand Wizards’ (the new name for the Chequer’s daytrippers apparently) also had another meeting this morning, were they discussed again whether they could get on board to back PM’s deal and there was no firm conclusion.”
The problem with the name is its association, not with JK Rowling or characters in the author’s orbit, but it’s connection to the racist group, the Ku Klux Klan.
As many pointed out, leaders of the KKK were referred to as ‘Grand Wizards’ in the 19th century.
Former Tory chancellor turned newspaper editor George Osborne was among the first to raise an eyebrow ...
Labour MPs couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing ...
While the briefing to Kuenssberg appears to have come from someone who attended the latest meeting of the group, other Brexiteers were dismissing the authenticity of the name.
Rees-Mogg, chairman of the influential European Research Group, said the name was “ridiculous” and “it’s certainly not a name we would take for ourselves”.
Kuenssberg later added that “for avoidance of doubt, couple of insiders told me using the nickname informally, no intended connection to anything else”.