I am toying with the idea of writing a book. No, seriously. I have the title already. Brexit - the new Titanic. It will be about a huge ship, the largest and most complex ocean liner ever built, the SS Brexit. The story begins just as the vessel leaves the previously unknown Farage Cash & Duncan-Smith shipyard in Belfast, on its way to Southampton for its maiden voyage.
The owner, the May-Davis line, have arranged a special inauguration cruise for people who don't actually care where they'll end up. The mystery destination is known only vaguely to captain Johnson and a tight group around him including the medical officer Dr Fox. Captain Johnson, stocky with a shock of pure white hair peeking out from beneath the gold braid of his peaked cap, is new to the line but has convinced Mrs May that his six languages and impressive master's certificate qualifies him to take charge. This in spite of his permanent idiotic grin.
Heavily in debt and unable to get insurance, May-Davis know that the success of the voyage is crucial to their survival.
Worse, the mighty ship was built using UKIP labour, who for cultural reasons, refused to use high grade German rivets and secretly substituted cheaper but inferior British ones, drastically weakening the hull. In a strange quirk of fate, a giant iceberg breaks off from an ice shelf far away in the north Atlantic at exactly the same moment Mrs May watches the doomed ship cast off and the two massive screws begin to propel the great vessel to its fateful destination. On board is the shipyard owner Nigel Farage and as his special guest, the billionaire real estate tycoon and soon to be US president Ronald Dump.
The story follows Adams and Sturdy as the ship makes a chaotic and ill tempered journey negotiating its way around Europe and at the end collides with the iceberg. Adams spends the final few hours rearranging deck chairs while Captain Johnson does bizarre corporal Jones impressions using an old Lee Enfield rifle and a fixed bayonet blaming the whole disaster on Jean Claude Juncker. Unlike the original story where the tragic ending came out of the blue, the dramatic tension in this modern version must derive from the cast of ill equipped characters since we all know the final disastrous outcome right from the outset.
I may give the story a happy ending where SS Brexit, badly holed, does not sink but is towed back to the continent by a Dutch tug and moored 26 miles off Calais where it remains forever and ever as a tourist destination. What do you think?
I may give the story a happy ending where SS Brexit, badly holed, does not sink but is towed back to the continent by a Dutch tug and moored 26 miles off Calais where it remains forever and ever as a tourist destination. What do you think?
