Germany promises to acknowledge 1966 Wembley goal as Britain goes to the polls

IN the great game of chicken that is the EU referendum, ze Germans have finally relented and promised to give their English cousins all that they have wanted for the past half century. 

The country’s Bild newspaper welcomed referendum day with a tongue -in-cheek first page plea for Britain to remain in the union, offering a treasure chest of rewards and concessions that might encourage even the most die-hard Brexiteers to think twice. 

“Dear Brits, if you remain in the EU … then we ourselves will recognise the Wembley goal” the paper announced above a grainy picture of Geoff Hurst’s disputed extra-time goal in the 1966 World Cup Final. 

If that wasn’t enough to seal the deal, Bild also pledged to ban their goalkeeper from their next international penalty shootout, place towels on sun loungers to ensure that British tourists get the best seats by the pool, reject sun cream in a show of solidarity with their lobster skinned rivals, put their clocks back one hour, introduce an EU resolution banning beer froth, and pluck every James Bond baddie from their very own population. 

Meanwhile back in Blighty the leaders of the two main parties have cast their votes, with Cameron emerging from the polling station hand in hand with his blue clad wife Samantha looking like a man who had mightily relieved himself. 

Jeremy Corbyn, rolling the dice with hysterical tabloid coverage by not wearing a tie to vote, strolled out of an Islington station with a peculiar grin on his face that suggested he had voted Leave after all. 

With varied polling suggesting a lead for the Remain camp stretching towards the six point mark, Brexit’s biggest backers, the Daily Mail, voiced the very realistic hope that wet and miserable weather could negate Remain’s advantage and see the dogged Leave fanatics win the day out of sheer perseverance. 

The Guardian, Mirror and Sun front pages all used space imagery to make their spectacularly opposed cases, with the Sun featuring a rising sun, oddly enough, over an enormous Britain at the top of the world as it hung majestically in the void, and the headline ‘Independence Day’, spelled with a hard to read futuristic font. 

Unimaginatively sticking to stereotypes about the negativity of the Remain campaign, the Mirror went with a poorly illustrated and bizarrely green black hole on its front that will more likely remind readers of their upcoming colonoscopy than the intended fear of an economic apocalypse. 

‘Don’t take a leap into the dark, vote remain today’ read the headline that will be sure to get dithering voters out into the rain to stand in a long queue next to the high school they have studiously ignored for the best part of 23 years. 

It will be a long day of speculation with no exit polls until the early hours of tomorrow morning. Bookies have enjoyed the largest betting event in British political history and the probability of Britain remaining in Europe stands at 74 per cent according to a Number Cruncher analysis of polls. 

Sunderland is expected to be the first to declare at around midnight, while a flurry of results will come in at roughly 2am. Best guess estimates reckon that between 4am and 5am we will have a rough idea of the result, likely confirmed by 8am unless it all goes to the trenches.