Government Announces New Tax on Icing, Calls It the Icing on the Cake Britain Solves Every National Crisis by Decorating It, While Ministers Insist Buttercream Is Now Official Economic Policy LONDON –– The Government unveiled what officials described as “Britain’s sweetest fiscal reform in generations” after announcing a new National Icing Levy, assuring taxpayers that adding another tax was simply “the icing on the cake.” Ministers insisted the levy would transform…
Andy Burnham’s First Act of Northern Devolution: Relocate Every Left-Wing Newspaper to Manchester Labour declares Britain cannot truly rebalance the economy until every columnist is forced to complain about the rain from a different postcode. Britain’s incoming political revolution has finally identified the nation’s greatest regional inequality. It isn’t investment. It isn’t transport. It isn’t wages. It’s the embarrassing fact that almost every newspaper editorial demanding socialism is still being…
Andy Burnham Announces He Will Solve Britain’s Problems Just as Soon as Britain Stops Being So Complicated Labour’s new saviour reportedly begins by launching a nationwide campaign to decentralise confidence while centralising optimism LONDON. Andy Burnham has reportedly unveiled the first stage of his grand vision for Britain by explaining that the country’s biggest obstacle is reality itself. The former Manchester mayor insists Britain can be “rewired,” “rebalanced,” and “reimagined,”…
France Tries to Lock Britain Out of EU Defence, Locks Everyone Else In Instead Paris spent the best part of a year engineering a defence procurement fund specifically designed to keep British arms firms out of the trough. This week the European Commission confirmed France will receive €15.1 billion of the €16.2 billion it demanded from the SAFE fund — a €1.1 billion shortfall French officials are describing, in the…
France Discovers That ‘Backfire’ Is Also a Perfectly Acceptable Defence Doctrine 🔥 Military planners unveil revolutionary strategy in which every failed attempt to weaken Britain somehow strengthens Britain’s negotiating position instead. Paris Dateline: Introducing “Strategic Backfire” French defence officials have reportedly unveiled a bold new military doctrine known as “Strategic Backfire,” after discovering that their latest effort to reduce Britain’s role in European defence accidentally inconvenienced France almost as much…
Paris Announces Strategic Plan to Punish Britain, Accidentally Strengthens Anglo-European Cooperation Instead France’s attempt to keep Britain out of EU defence money reportedly hits a small financial boomerang, proving once again that European unity works best when everyone is furious at the same French spreadsheet. Brussels Dateline: Britain Sneaks Back In Through the Paperwork Paris has reportedly discovered that writing rules to exclude Britain from EU defence funding can be…
Britain Considers Rejoining Marxist EU, Discovers It’s Been Renovated Into a Commune With Better Stationery Officials shocked to discover the club they left now requires ideological recycling bins and twelve committees to approve a sandwich. When Britain voted to leave the European Union, supporters and opponents argued endlessly about sovereignty, trade, immigration, and regulations. Years later, politicians occasionally suggest that perhaps Britain should drift back toward Brussels. Unfortunately, returning would…
Government Cuts Infrastructure Approval Time from Forever to Slightly Less Than Forever | Ministers hail landmark reform as builders reach for calendars anyway
Britain Modernises Defence Strategy by Hoping Enemy Drones Respect No-Fly Signs | MOD unveils laminated signage as first line of aerial defence
Slugs March on Westminster After Government Threatens Further Cuts to Municipal Lettuce LONDON — Thousands of angry slugs have begun what organisers describe as a “rapid advance” on Westminster, demanding an immediate end to austerity, the restoration of council flowerbeds and a legally enforceable minimum moisture allowance. The demonstration began shortly after dawn in a compost heap outside Croydon and is expected to reach Parliament sometime during the reign of…
In a development so seismic that several senior accountants reportedly fainted directly into their Earl Grey, King Charles III has agreed to become the first modern British monarch to disclose his personal tax bill — proving, at last, that even residents of palaces occasionally receive brown envelopes from the government that do not contain invitations to anything pleasant. The revelation sent shockwaves through the nation, or at least through the nation’s accountancy…
Meghan Markle Royal Life: Palace Nearly Issued a PowerPoint Experts Confirm Curtsying to the Queen Does Not Require the Buddy System LONDON — Royal insiders are reportedly revealing that Meghan Markle frequently appeared bewildered during her early days in the monarchy, leading exhausted palace aides to consider issuing laminated cue cards, illustrated flowcharts, and what one footman described as “a beginner’s guide to several centuries of British awkwardness.” According to reports, staff…
No. 5 Downing Street Opens is Britain’s First Salon for Politicians Experiencing a Leadership Crisis Stella Offers Hair Styles, Policy Highlights and Emergency Cabinet Trims LONDON — Britain’s political establishment has acquired a glamorous new neighbour with the opening of No. 5 Downing Street, a revolutionary hair salon where ministers can have their fringes trimmed, their grey roots concealed and their electoral catastrophes blow-dried into something resembling momentum. The official government describes 10…
Test for British Citizenship Now Requires Applicants to Understand Government Better Than the Government Does LONDON — The Home Office has reportedly modernised the test for British citizenship, shifting the emphasis away from kings and dates and toward a more pressing question: can the applicant explain how the country is actually run, given that most of the people running it cannot. Applicants Must Demonstrate Civic Knowledge Most Sitting Ministers Cannot Produce on…
The British Citizenship Test: 20 Questions on How the Country Is Actually Run LONDON — Forget the official 24-question Life in the UK Test. The Home Office handbook will tell you when the Magna Carta was signed. It will not tell you what a quango actually does, how a minister resigns without resigning, or why your council can issue a reference number but never a repair. This is the test…
No Policy Changes, Just New Con-Man at the Head of Labour LONDON — Labour has entered its traditional moment of spiritual renewal, which, for those unfamiliar with the ritual, involves removing one face from the podium, attaching a different face, and asking the nation to feel something hopeful about the woodwork. Keir Starmer is reportedly out. Andy Burnham is reportedly in. And the British public is being asked to believe the washing machine…
7 Reasons Labour Keeps Getting It Wrong: A Century of Trying Very Hard and Making It Worse LONDON — Labour has been getting things wrong for so long it has developed a kind of institutional muscle memory for it. Like a man who keeps walking into the same glass door, the party doesn’t lack confidence. It lacks a different door. What follows is not an attack. It is a historical service.…
Labour Party Unity Collapse Markets LONDON — Financial markets trembled Monday after senior Labour figures assured the country that the party was “completely united,” a phrase experienced Britons immediately recognised as Westminster’s equivalent of hearing, “Everything is under control,” moments before a smoke alarm begins singing Jerusalem in a pitch only dogs can detect. Traders in London reportedly paused their screens, removed their glasses, pinched the bridge of their noses, and quietly whispered, “Uh-oh.”…
Keir Starmer Resigns; Burnham’s Tape Measure Vindicated LONDON — THE LONDON PRAT — Keir Starmer resigned as Prime Minister on Monday morning, thereby confirming what the tape measure found near the Number 10 curtains had been trying to tell us all along. Standing outside Downing Street in the manner of a man who had rehearsed his dignity until it was absolutely watertight, Starmer said he accepted “with good grace” that his party no…
Democratic Socialists: 50 Jokes About Other People’s Money Every movement has a sacred text. The democratic socialists have a budget. The budget has two lines. One says where the money goes, and the other quietly hopes nobody asks where it came from. What follows is fifty small observations about the gap between the brochure and the staff meeting. None of it is mean. All of it is true, which is…
The Treasury Turbine: How Sunderland Runs on Subsidy LONDON — After years of chasing the perfect clean energy source, Britain’s car industry has finally found one that never runs flat. It is not wind, which sulks on still days. It is not solar, which sulks roughly nine months of the year. It is taxpayer money. Unlike lithium, which has to be hacked out of a mountain in a country you cannot point…
Industrial Strategy: The Great British Subsidy Scramble LONDON — Somewhere in a glass tower off Victoria Street, a chief executive is rehearsing the most important pitch of his year. Not to a customer. Customers are exhausting. Customers want things, and they want them to work. No, he’s rehearsing for the people who never ask awkward questions about whether the product is any good: the government. Modern corporate strategy has quietly…
Labour Party Celebrates Grassroots Activism, Global Elites, Celebrity Billionaires, And Other Ordinary Working People Bollinger Bolsheviks: Comrades Who Tax Everyone But Themselves Britain’s Champagne Left Declares War On Wealth, Inequality, And Anyone Unfortunate Enough To Be Sat In Economy LONDON — Somewhere in a Georgian townhouse in Islington, a comrade is finishing a glass of something French and explaining, with great feeling, why ordinary people should own less. He has read his…
Thames Water Rejects Radical Proposal To Simply Stop Leaking Everywhere LONDON — The water company has firmly dismissed a bold and controversial suggestion that it could improve service by no longer leaking water all over the place, describing the idea as “ambitious,” “premature,” and “the sort of thing that sounds easy until you’ve seen the pipes.” A spokesperson insisted that the rivers were not being polluted but were instead receiving…
Russian Warship Fires Warning Shots In English Channel, British Tourists Mistakenly Assume It’s Part Of Portsmouth Maritime Festival LONDON — Holidaymakers along the south coast greeted the sound of live ordnance this week with the calm enthusiasm normally reserved for a passing brass band, having concluded that the warship lobbing rounds across the water was simply this year’s headline act at a maritime festival nobody could quite remember booking. “Cracking pyrotechnics,”…
Labour Defence Crisis Deepens After Ministers Discover Tanks Cannot Be Paid For With Positive Thinking LONDON. The Ministry of Defence was plunged into fresh turmoil this week after senior officials reportedly learned, to their visible distress, that armoured vehicles cannot be procured through manifestation, vision boards, or a really sincere group meditation. The revelation, described by one aide as “the worst budget meeting since the last budget meeting,” has forced…
Keir Starmer Announces Yet Another “Reset” With Europe, Britain Begins Looking For Original Factory Settings LONDON — The Prime Minister this week unveiled his latest “reset” with Europe, the seventh in roughly eighteen months, prompting a weary nation to start hunting through its drawers for the little laminated card that explains how to restore the country to its original condition. Nobody can quite remember what that condition was. But everyone…
Anthropic Loses Washington’s Trust: 15 Cracking Observations LONDON — Over the pond, a company that spent years preaching restraint has somehow managed to rattle the most powerful address in America. Here are fifteen observations, plus a bonus, on the week the chatbot got summoned to the briefing room. When AI Safety Meets a 90-Minute Deadline Anthropic spent years warning humanity about AI risks, only to discover the greatest existential threat…
London Waste Collection Now a Heroic War Against the City’s Endless Rubbish | Bin crews keep the metropolis liveable while everyone takes them for granted
London Ambassadors Confirmed to Have the City’s Best Parking | Diplomats enjoy immunity from the one thing that truly torments Londoners
