Former European colony declares independence

Editor’s note: This is a satirical report on the United Kingdom leaving the European Union.

So to London, capital of what until Friday was the European colony of Great Britain. At 11pm local time, this former coal and pop-music producer declared independence and shook off the manacles of frictionless free trade with its close neighbours.

Many observers were concerned lest triumphalist Brexiteers should attempt to perform the ritual bonging of the totemic local clock Big Ben, and thereby infuriate the vanquished subsidy-bloated Europhiles. But forecasts of violence were unfounded.

To the untrained eye, the nationalistic fervour that has gripped Britain was a reaction to decades of London-centrism, nostalgia for Imperial weights and measures, and concern about Polish men in Everlast tracksuits poaching carp from their silted-up waterways: a tinderbox that went up in smoke when revolutionaries Nigel “Spartacus” Farage and TV’s Dr David Bull executed a plan so masterful that not even they have ever been at liberty to fully explain what it was.

Up and down this former fishery, the dust is settling on the tens of Brexit parties that were held across the newly-liberated nation on Friday night.

After a night on the sparkling English pear wine, the insurgents appear to have gone back to ground while the outside world watches and wonders: what happens next?

The dissidents’ chief demand was to “take back control”. While non-Brexiteers (or Remainers as they became sympathetically known) were too preoccupied with superfoods, Pilates timetables, and getting their kids into the right primary school to notice any lack of control, outsiders looked on awestruck as the Brexiteers managed to negotiate its return without one shot fired.

Linked to control has been sovereignty – a local shamanic tradition which rarely makes sense to outsiders unless they have fully experienced the altered state of consciousness that full exposure to common sense can bring. Restored sovereignty will now be redistributed in the form of cashback (after original Eurosceptic, Bill Cash). The European Super-state looks on with interest to see how the local yeomanry will respond; anecdotal reports suggest that some Leavers are living up to their name and taking theirs to Benidorm, but it seems likely that most will keep it where it is safest: in a Slazenger hold-all under the bed.

Boris Johnson has stepped into the power vacuum left by the 2016 insurrection. He has been flexing his diplomatic muscles by negotiating unrivalled post-Brexit trade deals. Emboldened, he has placed a defiant Union Jack in the centre of the trade negotiation roundabout with the neighbouring rogue state, the United States, and invited Huawei to build the UK’s new 5G network.

The Huawei decision is seen locally as a masterful triple bluff that has thwarted Chinese ability to spy on Britons by letting them know that they know they are doing it. On the eve of crucial trade talks, the revolutionaries hope that this swagger will let US tribune Mike Pompeo know that they are not just war-weary soldiers, but a proud nation that has risen Phoenix-like from the bonfire of EU red tape. As of now, Britain can strike trade deals at will, subject to Chinese approval.

One of the biggest tests of the insurgency was the Irish border. Depending on who and where you are, this is also known as the English border in Ireland.

The depleted but triumphant British trawlermen who must now sail around it have made sure that the calamitous worldwide decline in fish stocks has been subordinated to their right to do the overfishing, and must now scan the horizon for reprisals from rogue European super trawlers. Do not doubt that if Brexit is to mean Brexit, the patriotic mariners will “cry ‘haddock!’ and let slip the dogs of war”.

In coming months, as the despised colonialists are bussed out of the country past the M20 Lorry Park, the revolutionaries, from the ERG to UKIP, must come together and begin training the hundreds of thousands of care and medical workers who will soon be needed to fill the shortage in skills gap. They might also come up with a plan for the sheep farmers whose EU subsidies were the only thing between them and work as a barista; or indeed the Honda and Jaguar-Land Rover employees on shortened hours whose skills may just mean they now have to work behind enemy lines in the EU, to send us back the cars we need to keep our motorways jammed.

For the moment, calm prevails. While Britain continues to follow EU rules and will contribute to its budget for another year, the revolutionaries now feel free. Hence, while uncertainty still hangs in the air, the valour of the self-styled “Spartans” who engineered this David and Goliath victory can only be saluted. While the patrinots were subsidising the poached-egg-and-avocado boom years, these soldiers of fortune inspired the nation’s patriotic heart with references to Magna Carta, straight bananas and daily Bomber Command flypasts over primary schools.

As these Arthurian knights wake from their sleep of victory and check their smartphones to see if they are still in control, all they are going to need now is a Huawei charger.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.