“It’s the only possible response to ‘Hard Brexit’: ‘Hard Remain’,” declares anti-Brexit campaigner Albert Diplock, one of the leading lights behind the ‘Remain Forever’ group which is leading calls for a second referendum on the UK leaving the EU. “When we win that referendum – and we will – we aren’t just going to reverse Article 51 and all the other work that’s been done to take us out of the EU, oh no, we’re going to implement ‘Hard Remain’. The hardest Remain possible, in fact.” Diplock and his supporters are proposing, in the event of winning a hypothetical second referendum, to actually strengthen the UK’s ties to the EU. “It’s not just revenge for the right wing’s attempts at driving through a ‘Hard Brexit’, although I won’t deny that it will be enormously satisfying to see their reactions,” Diplock explains. “But it would primarily be intended as a safeguard against these Brexit nutters if they ever found themselves in a position to wreck the UK economy again by trying to enact a ‘Hard Brexit’ – the closer and stronger our ties to Europe, the more difficult in future it will be to break them.” Among Diplock’s most controversial proposals is that the UK should become part of the Eurozone, abandoning the pound in favour of the Euro, thereby weakening the Treasury’s control over fiscal policy. “Believe me, it’s the best way to safeguard against some evil bastard like George Osborne becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer again,” he chuckles. “Besides, eliminating the Queen’s head from the currency will have those right wing lunatics like Gove and Ress-Mogg foaming at the mouth! With any luck they’ll suffer fatal seizures!”

Even more controversially, Diplock is proposing that a post post-Brexit Britain should enter the ‘Schengen Area’, abolishing border and passport controls with fellow members. “We don’t just want ‘freedom of movement, we want everyone to be free to go where they bloody well please,” he gleefully asserts. “we want those xenophobic Brexit bastards to be forced to rub shoulders with as many different cultures as possible. If they don’t like it, they know what they can do – and being part of Schengen will make it easier than ever to bugger off somewhere else!” With the UK exposed to ever more foreign visitors from across the continent, Diplock hopes that the country will become more ‘Europeanised’. “It can only be for the good – if the UK is to move forward and prosper we have to give up all this petty nationalism, xenophobia and dreams of Empire. It’s all bollocks – it is harking back to a golden past that never existed,” he explains. “We need to become more like our European neighbours – we need to get more relaxed about stuff like drugs and prostitution, just like the Dutch. Learn to drink without turning into mindless thugs like the French, enjoy shorter working hours like the Scandinavians. Damn it, we need to get less prissy about porn, like the Scandinavians! And, frankly, the best way to do this is to expose ourselves to ever increasing numbers of immigrants from those countries!”

But it isn’t just increased immigration from the EU that Diplock and his movement would be encouraging if Brexit was reversed. “We want to open the floodgates to immigration from everywhere,” he says. “The Brexit nutters like to bang on about not having control of our own borders while we are members of the EU, so want to show them that we do fully control our borders with regard to non-EU immigration – and we’re going to do it by showing that we can open our borders to anyone!” Diplock points out that it has always been the case that the majority of immigration to the UK has come from outside the EU, but that the Brexiteers never complained about this, indicating that they would welcome more non-EU immigrants. “They always like to bang on about how great the old Empire was that we’ll be actively encouraging more people from Commonwealth countries to come here,” he enthuses. “And we don’t mean those from those nice white countries like Australia and New Zealand. Oh no, we’ll be looking to the non-white countries, especially those in Africa. We want our immigrants dark – the blacker the better, in fact!”

Far from increasing racial tensions, Diplock believes that such a policy will actually have the opposite effect. “Our aim is to make sure that every bigot has a black immigrant neighbour,” he says. “With luck, that will encourage them to take advantage of the ease of international movement enabled by joining Schengen and sod off out of the UK. Either that, or by actually meeting and living next door to real black people they might realise just how irrational and idiotic their bigotry really is.” Alternatively, Diplock hopes that, confronted by an entirely legal influx of non-white immigrants, some of the hard core Brexiteers might suffer fatal heart attacks. Indeed, there have already been unconfirmed reports that former UKIP leader Nigel Farage collapsed, clutching at his chest, after a caller to his LBC radio phone in outlined Remain Forever’s proposed programme of ‘Hard Remain’.

Diplock and his followers have also proposed that, if Brexit is reversed, the UK should actually pay more in contributions to the EU than it currently does. “What else would we do with the money, use it to fund more tax cuts for the super rich?” he asks. “It isn’t as if, in the past, we haven’t claimed every grant going from the EU to subsidise our industries and agriculture.” He also proposes that the UK should sign up to every EU directive and law with regard to workers’ rights as part of a ‘Hard Remain’. “We need to embrace those shorter working hours, rights to sick leave and the like,” he opines, “It’s what we need to lay the foundations of a better Britain. A Britain that actually cares about its citizens.” Leading hard line Brexiteers including Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Davis have already threatened that, if a ‘Hard Remain’ ever comes to pass, they will leave the country. “Good,” is Diplock’s only response.