Still with this?
The plot has been advanced.
How so?
Boris Johnson has been elected Prime Minister.
Is that good?
Yes.
I smell a trap.
Good nose.
Is Boris Johnson’s election good for everyone?
Fuck, no.
For whom is it good for?
Well, it’s very good for Boris Johnson. Mostly just that. And if it were beneficial to anyone other than himself, Boris wouldn’t notice.
Anyone else?
Brexiteers!
Eww. That sounds like the evil version of the Mousketeers.
Sure. They sing, dance, and ritually consume an orphanageful of kids.
“Orphanageful” is not a word.
It is a measure of children. Like bushel for weight.
We’re moving on. Brexiteers are, I assume, in favor of the UK splitting off from the European Union.
Yes. And hard. Like a iron rod made of boners. Hard Brexit.
Stop it.
Gonna give it to the EU so fucking hard. Right in the Schengen.
I’m begging you.
Oh, boo. You poop parties. Anyhoo, Boris and his backers are in favor of what’s called Hard Brexit, which is that thing where you tank your economy all at once. There’s also a Soft Brexit, which is where you tank your economy more gradually, but also maybe all at once.
I don’t understand.
Hard Brexit is this: at midnight on October 31st–
Spooooooky.
–the United Kingdom would no longer be part of the European Union. At all. No more free passage between Britain and the Continent. Trade agreements all nullified. Work visas revoked.
Those sound like large problems. Surely, the government has plans to handle them.
DUMMY SLAP!
You deserved that.
OW!
You speak like a child, and you get slapped like a child.
Don’t slap children, man.
I slap ’em into shape. Families around the country send me their whelps. I make ’em men, even the ones who don’t wanna be men.
We’ve drifted from the topic. Are there any procedures being put into place to mitigate the destabilizing effect of a Hard Brexit?
Of course. The British government hasn’t done nothing. They’ve stockpiled canned foods and medicine.
Oh, that’s a bad sign.
Right? When your slightly-disturbed neighbor Fen-Fen stores a year’s worth of supplies out in the shed, it’s amusing, but when the government starts hoarding tinned potatoes and penicillin, you should get concerned.
Is there enough stockpiled for everyone?
Meals shall be distributed according to the rules of the barony. Obviously, the Royals and all their fuckface cousins and great-aunts need to get fed first. Spice Girls are next, and so on. Whatever’s left can be fought over by the urchins.
It won’t be that bad.
Not for the rich. Almost definitely, this will turn out well for the rich. They will, in all likelihood, find a way to become richer from the chaos. The middle-class and poor will get fucked.
That always happens.
Weird.
Let’s get back to Boris Johnson. Who is he?
Boris Johnson is a character from a Evelyn Waugh novel, or maybe Martin Amis; he would have made an excellent viceroy. Overly-educated, properly racist, able to talk the stink off a badger’s asshole, and without a single belief other than I should be in charge.
Eton?
Mais oui.
Oxford?
Naturally.
Sometimes I think that Stalin was right, and that people really do want to be ruled by their betters.
Don’t quote Stalin approvingly on my site, please. Stalin is not a FoTotD.
More about Boris Johnson, please.
After school, he went to work as a journalist. He got fired for making up shit, and then another paper hired him, and he got fired for being racist, and then another paper hired him, and he got fired some more. Then he became an MP, screwed around on his wife in public, was racist some more, stuttered in Latin, etc.
Continue.
In 2007, Boris became Mayor of London.
That sounds like an important job.
It does sound like that, doesn’t it? Except the position has only existed since 2003, and has way less power than an American mayor. They’re mostly in charge of the transit. And they’re not allowed to sic the cops on hippies. When Boris was Mayor of London, he bought the cops some water cannons to subdue rioters, and Parliament immediately said The fuck you think you’re doing, Mayor Daley? and forbid the police from using them. And the Mayor’s office doesn’t have full control of the purse. There’s a lot of ribbon-cutting and cheerleading involved in the gig.
“The face of the city” type thing.
Exactly. And Boris was his usual entertaining self. Constant low-level scandals, but London didn’t burn down. It’s done that several times before, you know.
England is a land of tradition.
Hey, he got reelected.
So did Nixon.
God bless that man. After two terms as Mayor, Boris went back to Parliament and started agitating for Brexit. He drove all over the nation in a Vote Leave bus with lies painted on the side. Spoke some Latin, accused bureaucrats in Brussels of being Hitler, the usual. Support for leaving the EU reaches a mild boil. Then-PM David Cameron calls a referendum, as he believes Remain will win handily, and destroy his opponents entirely; this is a–and I hate to bring Hitler back into this–a bad idea of “let’s invade Russia during the winter” levels. The referendum swings (barely) to Leave, and Cameron resigns. Boris has what he has been clamoring for all these months.
So why didn’t he run for Prime Minister at the time?
Didn’t quite have the horses. But Theresa May made him Foreign Secretary.
How well did that go?
He recited Kipling in Burma.
Jesus, that’s a bit on-the-nose.
The man knows how to provide fan service.
And now he’s Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Yup.
How long before Iran pokes him?
I’d be shocked if the Revolutionary Guard’s boats aren’t speeding towards a British oil tanker as we speak.
How will he deal with that?
I have no idea. Maybe he’ll quote Thucydides and smile mischievously. That’s his usual go-to in times of crisis.
Leaving aside the ever-increasing possibility of WWIII, does this mean that a Hard Brexit is guaranteed?
Nothing guaranteed in this life but pain, boy.
Stop that.
The answer is “no.” The MPs might call for a No Confidence vote, or a General Election. But Boris could suspend Parliament, I think. The British political system is impenetrable. But, no, Brexit still isn’t a gimme. Million ways the whole shebang could go sideways before Halloween.
But what if it does?
Then Boris Johnson will be the last Prime Minster of the United Kingdom. Scotland would secede. Northern Ireland might go, too. It’ll just be England and Wales left, and there’s nothing in Wales except sheep and Rob Brydon. The death of the Second British Empire has finally come.
I just thought the end would be less embarrassing.
We all did.
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