The Ministry of Defence has joined in the festival of proper British sovereignty regained with the announcement that all rifles will be replaced by longbows by 2022.
“We all know how terrified the French are of our famous English longbows,” Mr T. Off, Conservakip MP, junior minister at the MOD, advised LCD’s busy defence correspondent.
“And the return of such a powerful symbol of English military power will give us the edge once we engage in prosecco focused tariff wars with the largest trading bloc on Earth.”
It’s believed the French are still so traumatised by the exploits of Henry V, before he died of the runs, that they will lobby the Germans to give us all we want in the negotiations centred on leaving as many British pensioners as possible resident in the Costa del Sol.
“The Spanish will quake too,” Mr T. suggested, “if they start kicking off over Gibraltar we’ll set a frigate on fire and send it into the harbour at Malaga.”
This is seen as British exceptionalism at its best, especially given the demands of austerity mean that the navy is soon to de-commission its frigates and replace them with a group of angry people on the shore shouting about forriners.
A defence spokesman for Labour endorsed the plan, “English craftsmen fashioning traditional English items by hand? What’s not to like. Once we seize power and drive the entire service economy into the sea, because of our adherence to the outdated doctrines of Lexit, which have paid no attention to all the rights the EU have enshrined in law, handicrafts will replace pretty much all of British industry anyway. I’m personally going to live in a damp wattle hut until I get trench foot.”
Asked about the increased military threat of deluded English nationalists holding longbows after Brexit, the EU commented,
“No one was stopping you arming yourselves with longbows, the decision to adopt rifles was an English decision, if not a Scottish or Northern Irish one. You are welcome to go back in time as far as you like.
We expect to clean the bones of your economy if we can get in before the Americans and the Chinese in the devalued U.K. plc asset stripping orgy that is to come.”
Children will soon be expected to miss each Monday to practise with the longbows while singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory”.
This is showing great foresight, as it will give them the edge once the food riots begin.
*Originally published in 2017. Just had to change the date from 2019 to 2022. Brexit. It’s been telling us what it is from the start.