AFTER almost four months of a dog’s Brexmess, our Conservative overlords are slowly shaping a plan to reboot the UK’s economy after the country leaves the EU in one almighty xenophobic sulk. Britain is going to be butter together. According to Andrea Leadsom, Minister of State for Energy, Climate Change, and Great British Bake Off, Britain is going to storm the world with its food and drink products.
Speaking at a food trade event in Paris as she sipped on a cup of Earl Grey and nibbled a patriotic sandwich, Andrea told the French that British food was grand. Never mind France and its different cheese for every day of the year, Britain’s got biscuits. The UK exports over £10 billion a year in food and drink products, and all across the world when people think of a Brexit Britain, they think “crackers”.
The great food plan also conveniently settles the dispute between those who want a hard Brexit and those who want a soft one. All you need to do is dunk your hard Brexit in your tea for a few seconds and it will soften. Everyone is happy in this new land of Great British opportunities. Well, everyone except migrants and foreigners. And the poor, and the disabled, and the low paid, and everyone else who’s going to have to pay for Conservative idiocy. But apart from that, everyone is going to be happy.
Warming to her theme, the Minister of State for Clutching at Strawberries explained how Brexit brings amazing opportunities to the British biscuit and conserves industry. We’ll export innovative jams to France. Now Britain has a beef with the Europe we are free to export beef to the rest of the world – at least those parts of it which haven’t banned it due to mad cow disease. When the world thinks of Britain, it thinks of tea, said Andrea, and tea will be Britain’s salvation. Obviously this is great British tea from the tea plantations in the Peak District, and not tea that the UK is going to have to import from abroad that will cost far more due to the collapse of the pound. And we will sweeten our tea with sugar refined from the treacle from the Lancashire treacle mines. A nice cup of tea fixes everything, including British economic collapse.
She warmed to her theme as the tea-cosy on her head overheated her brain. We’ll wow the Walloons with our waffles. We’ll drench Japan in gin. The Brexiteers will silence the mockers who claim that there’s no plan to deal with Brexit and send honey to Hungary as part of the Great British plan bee. The UK might no longer be a part of the world’s largest and richest trading bloc, but we’ll always have our scones and jam. Who needs Europe when you’ve got the Ukipshire branch of the Women’s Institute and royalist sponge cakes?
Britain no longer has an empire, but we will always have empire biscuits and the world will flock to our door for them. We will fight those Europhiles on the peaches, we shall fight on the coffee grounds, we shall fight on the peeled fruit and the sugar beets, we shall fight in the chilli; we shall never surrender. Our tea exports will take over the world, never have so many owed so much to a brew.
Can you imagine the reaction if a prominent supporter of independence announced that it independence would herald marvellous opportunities for Scotland’s shortbread and teacakes trade? There would be howls of derision and outrage. Yet this is all that we’ve heard so far from the British government about how the UK is going to make its way in the post-Brexit world. Well, that and the insistent claim that the EU will cave in to Theresa May’s every demand because the Germans want to sell us cars. But we should be grateful to Andrea Leadsom for clarifying what Brexit means. It means rhubarb. It means nuts. It means a raspberry. These are the broad shoulders of the UK that Scotland is told it is better for us to rely on, and we discover that they carry a head that’s a fruitcake.
The interesting thing about the UK’s £10 billion-worth of food and drink exports is that over £5.1bn of them are Scottish, according to the most recent statistics published by the Scottish Government. The Scottish whisky trade alone brings in around £4bn annually, and Scottish fish exports bring in another £613 million. And when Scotland becomes independent, we’ll be taking those export industries with us. Proportionately, food and drink exports make up a larger proportion of Scottish exports than UK exports, but it would be considered ludicrous for a Scottish minister to stand up and make a speech like Andrea Leadsom made this week. Britain has fallen to such a ridiculously low level that Andrea’s crackers plan is the best that we’ve got.
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