Theresa May has announced plans for a national festival to celebrate leaving the EU. The heart sinks.
For a start, the way things are progressing it’s highly unlikely we’ll be free of the shackles of Brussels by 2022, when the event is scheduled to take place.
And given Mother Theresa’s inept handling of the negotiations, I wouldn’t trust her to organise a booze-up in a brewery, let alone a nationwide pageant designed to showcase the best of the arts, innovation, business, technology and sport.
The Prime Minister has earmarked £120 million for the festival, which doesn’t sound a great deal in the general scheme of things. Labour blew £1 billion on the Millennium Dome fiasco, with nothing much to show for it.
The Government’s track record on grand projects doesn’t inspire much confidence, either. Look at the HS2 railway line.
If the Festival of Brexit runs true to form, it will end up ten times over budget and about five years late.
Nor is there any guarantee that it won’t be hijacked by hardline Remainers, like the Last Night Of The Proms.
Mrs May wants the event to be inspired by the Festival of Britain in 1951, which lifted the nation’s spirits during a prolonged period of post-war austerity.
‘Just as millions of Britons celebrated our nation’s great achievements in 1951, we want to showcase what makes our country great today,’ she said. But this is a hugely different place from 70 years ago.
Back then, patriotism was celebrated, not scorned. This was still a nation of churchgoers. Today our new state religion is diversity. How can we celebrate Britain without some sour-faced pressure group taking offence?
So, if the festival does go ahead, what can we expect? Fortunately, a crack team of civil servants has already been working on a provisional programme, a draft of which has been leaked to this column.
All events will be broadcast live by satellite on the BBC, ITV, Sky and Channels 4 and 5.
The festival will kick off with a national day of multi-faith prayer, led by the Ayatollah of Canterbury, the Right Reverend Ram Jam Choudary, who will present a sermon calling for global jihad from the Abu Hamza Mosque in Finsbury Park.
The occasion will be marked by a nationwide 48-hour wildcat strike by transport workers, bringing all trains, buses and ferries to a complete standstill.
This will have the added benefit of encouraging commuters to use the 200,000 miles of dedicated cycle lanes which have been laid across the country, at a cost of £10 trillion. Cycle lane technology is an area in which Britain now leads the world, along with traffic jams.
Over in Stratford, East London, the Olympic Park will play host to an afternoon of synchronised stabbing, staged by teenage members of local street gangs, to mark Britain’s proud status as the knife crime capital of the world.
Pair of thieves tried to steal Deliveroo drivers’ moped in Stratford, east London, today
At Buckingham Palace, David Beckham will finally receive his long-overdue knighthood, for services to the tattoo industry.
Britain may not boast many outstanding landscape painters these days but it is a world-leader in body art. Scotland Yard has agreed to sponsor an exhibition of extreme tattoos, featuring hundreds of serving officers, many of whom model their body art on Maori warriors and Japanese Yakuza gangsters.
The Thames Barrier, one of Britain’s greatest engineering achievements, will be raised to allow a flotilla of illegal immigrants who have crossed the Channel in rowing boats, on jet skis and lilos to sail to Tower Bridge, where they will disembark before taking part in a ten-and-a-half-mile race to the DSS headquarters in Croydon.
Elsewhere in Central London, there will be a celebration of aggressive begging in Oxford Street by members of the Roma community, who have contributed so much to the vibrant diversity of our capital city.
Her Royal Highness Meghan Markle will pay a state visit to the long-established gypsy camp in the Marble Arch underpass, where she will cook a meal with local inhabitants, before cycling to Hyde Park Corner to open a new transgender toilet block.
Police will be on hand to prevent any potentially violent clashes between trans activists and Terfs, what we used to call women.
Channel 4 has commissioned a special edition of The Great British Bake Off for the occasion.
Prue Leith will pass judgment on a selection of traditional British classics, such as samosas, croissants, ciabattas, naan breads and chapatis.
In town centres across Britain, licensing laws will be relaxed to allow millions of revellers to drink themselves insensible, vomit and have sex in the street before putting on a realistic demonstration of hand-to-hand combat — just like every other weekend.
Mass rallies organised by the #MeToo movement will be held in London, Birmingham, Bristol and Glasgow, where First Minister Wee Burney will perform a ceremonial castration with a traditional Scottish skean dhu dagger on her predecessor, Alex Salmond, simply for being a man.
Her Majesty the Queen will travel to Northern Ireland. After apologising yet again for the potato famine, she will accept a traditional 21-Armalite salute from the balaclavaed marksmen of the Provisional IRA, who have agreed to patrol the border as part of the Brexit settlement.
She will then fly direct to Folkestone, Kent, to cut the ribbon at the official closing of the Channel Tunnel.
‘Her Majesty the Queen will travel to Northern Ireland. After apologising yet again for the potato famine, she will accept a traditional 21-Armalite salute from the balaclavaed marksmen of the Provisional IRA’
In the evening, Her Maj will attend a special Brexit concert at the Albert Hall, where a jubilant crowd will wave Palestinian and EU flags while listening to a programme of patriotic music, including Beethoven’s Ode To Joy. The night will end with choirs around Britain singing our new national anthem, Oh, Jeremy Corbyn.
At exactly 10pm, the entire United Kingdom will be plunged into darkness, following the decommissioning of Britain’s last coal-fired power station and the continuing ban on fracking to appease the Green lobby.
In future, the Government has agreed to import nuclear power from France, as part of the Brexit agreement.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, having surprised everyone by managing to cling to office, will spend the day at Chequers admiring the final version of her Brexit deal — which involves the UK remaining in the single market, the customs union, under the jurisdiction of the European Court, abandoning all controls on immigration and paying Brussels a £140 trillion divorce bill.
She will then attend a gala fireworks display in Hyde Park, where she will light a bonfire under a giant effigy of Boris Johnson, before announcing her intention, if she wins the 2022 General Election, to take Britain back into the EU.