A Post-Brexit Vision
So what will it all be like? Publishers are already printing maps of “The British Empire at its Furthest Extent” for every classroom in the country. Do we need all that smelly Parmesan cheese and shiny Golden Delicious apples? Do we need 24 hour clocks? No! Our old allies have been waiting patiently for fifty years to resume trade with us. Look at the delicious things in prospect, and our rationing books are already being printed. This is what you can save up your ration coupons for. So set your watch back to 1951, and look forward to it …
IMPORTS
No problem.
Happy farmers in the Gold Coast will be sending us Cocoa beans for our Frys and Rowntrees milk chocolate.
(Editor: I cannot find the Gold Coast on my map of Africa.
Author: You must be looking at the wrong side. If you can see Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Tanganyika, you’re looking at East Africa. It’s on the other side. It’s easy to find – pink on the map. All country names on UK maps will revert to 1947.)
Happy Malayans will slit rubber trees, fill little tin cans with sap, and send us rubber so that John Bull, Avon and Dunlop can manufacture our tyres. No Michelin or Goodyear here! They like to wear loincloths. It’s jolly hot out there.
Happy ladies in Ceylon will pick tea, the tips of which will go into PG Tips and Typhoo. What strong foreheads they have, and such pretty saris.
Happy Caribbean islanders will sing calypsos as they pick sugar cane for our Tate & Lyle sugar lumps. They’re allowed to eat some themselves too!
Happy Ugandans and Northern Rhodesians will pick organic cotton for the factories of Lancashire. Look at how they train small children to help!
Sturdy Canadian lumberjacks will get their choppers out, and will cut down trees so we can have rafters in our new prefabs (prefabricated houses), singing their favourite song (I’m a lumberjack, and I’m OK)
Happy Burmese farmers will pick their juiciest fruits to send to England, where school children will again receive third of a pint of orange product free daily on the NHS (with 50% Caribbean sugar).
Bold British fisherfolk will sail out from Goole, Grimsby and Fraserburgh to fill their boats to the gunwales with cod and haddock, protected by our Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier from predatory Icelandic gunboats. Within ten years, that aircraft carrier will have planes on board too.
Happy Australians will shear (Editor: word corrected. It wasn’t funny) sheep to send us wool for the factories of Yorkshire.
Smiling Japanese farmers will send us rice, picked from the paddy fields below Mount Fuji. How nice to be able to paddle during the working day! Look at their lovely hats to protect them in case the mountain erupts!
Vitamins? No problem because our lovable South Pacific Islanders will be sending us desiccated coconut for use in sticky cake confections. Cakes, coconut ice, coconut mushrooms. Yes, the islanders sometimes fall out of the trees, but that golden sand is soft and yielding, so they laugh off minor breaks and strains.
Happy Caribbean Islanders will pick coffee beans for our bottles of Camp coffee. None of that espresso or cappucinno, latte, americano muck here!
While The Argentine was never part of the Empire, we did build their railways so benefited from years of their Fray Bentos corned beef. Jamie Oliver’s “Gaucho Grub: 200 Five Minute Recipes with Corned Beef” is planned for Brexit day and not one recipe uses greasy olive oil. There will be a 200% tax on olive oil to protect British lard.
Don’t worry! That 198 grams on the tin will soon read 7 ounces again.
Happy New Zealanders will churn our butter. They’ll stop sending it all to Japan and China, and be deeply grateful that we’re buying it again instead.
South African and Cyprus sherry will grace our tables replacing all that silly wine. It will be bottled in Milton Keynes under the “Old England British Sherry” name.
THE MOTOR INDUSTRY
Our policemen will return to useful duties wearing helmets, as once our borders have been closed, crime will be forever eradicated from our shores. Once all those Audis have been banished, people will start driving sensibly again. No more “Vorsprung durch technik” around here!
Honda, Nissan and Toyota may have left our shores, but fear not! The government will be starting a nationalised British United Motor Corporation (BUM for short). The launch models of BUM cars will be the Austin Allegro and Morris Marina, as the original assembly lines have been purchased back from Central Asia, where they were sent in 1983. The intervening 35 years in Uzbekistsan have caused some tool wear (just as with our new Prime Minister, Mr Boris Johnson), so we may not expect quite the level of precision engineering enjoyed by purchasers of the original models.
Austin Allegros will come in white. Or white. Morris Marinas will be red. Or red. Note the new BUM radio aerial design. We’ll be able to recycle coat hangars too.
Peugeot have agreed to remain in Coventry and change their name back to Hillman. They will no longer have access to the parent company’s Frenchified designs, so will re-launch the Hillman Imp.
This will fill in the hole left by BMW’s removal of the Mini factory from Oxford to Dusseldorf.
The Imp will come in several versions. After the base Hillman model, there will be the Singer Imp (with added woodgrain Formica dashboard), the Sunbeam Imp with a go-faster stripe on the side, and the deluxe Humber Imp which adds a real wood top to the gear lever. The Commer Imp will have no windows at the rear for use as a van. This diversification of models is what made the British motor industry the greatest in the world.
They will not be fitted with SatNavs, what with Britain being banned from Euro satellites, but the premium Humber Imp will have an option for a radio-cassette player. The radio will be BBC only … the channels will be renamed The Light Programme, The Home Service and The Third Programme. a
A book of maps will be available for purchase at a reduced price of 7/6d … oh, did we mention the return of the duodecimal system? Yes, the whole country will be on LSD! (Or at least it will seem like it).
Many of the images are from our block of vintage school posters (circa 1950), none quite straight, all iPhone, lo res.
I wish I didn’t think you’re spot on with this and the “thought processes” involved on the rabid Brexiteers side.
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Not a picture of Rees-Mogg in sight.
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I had thought of adding the new school curriculum as devised by Johnson (Languages Latin only to GCSE, then compulsory Classical Greek), Gove (no literature after 1900 and no American lit) and Rees-Mog (History stops in 1914).
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Funniest read yet on a sad day. What a coincidence that there is indeed a Mr Boris Johnson as the prime minister. Bit of luck that…
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I commented on this before and you’re still spot on!
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