ONE of Liz Truss’s first tasks as Prime Minister will be writing personal letters to the commanders of Britain’s four nuclear-armed Trident submarines telling them how to respond if an enemy attack kills her and destroys Britain.
It is a grim duty undertaken by every incoming Premier, requiring an extraordinary degree of seriousness, sensitivity and solemnity.
Now the letter purportedly penned by Boris Johnson when he entered Downing Street in July 2019 is doing the rounds – and it appears to have deviated from those laudable ideals …
Hearty greetings, Cap’n – to you and your Jolly Jack Tars!
If you’re reading this, you’ll know Britain is right up S**t Creek without a paddle, if you’ll excuse the nautical term!
Your doughty boat may still be silently and safely running somewhere in the seven seas, but I’m afraid the UK ship of state is holed below the waterline and headed for Davy Jones’s locker.
So to you, skipper, falls the honour of inaugurating the retaliatory arse-kicking session on behalf of Dear Old Blighty (Deceased).
First of all, though, I hope you’ve got your boat well hidden in some oceanic trench because it’s liable to be rather hairy up here, with all sorts of exploding rubbish flying about.
Okay, down to business. I know you’ve got quite a few nukes to play with, but use them carefully. I can’t say who’s attacked us, so you’d better spread ’em round a bit and give the usual suspects a damn good thrashing.
Lob a few at the Kremlin of course, although Mad Vlad will almost certainly be skulking in his bunker in the Urals. The Yanks have probably already wiped Russia off the face of the Earth, but we must show willing as well. The Special Relationship lives on, even if the US is a radioactive wasteland.
Better send one or two atomic firecrackers over to Peking while you’re at it – I don’t know if old Xi joined in the nuke-fest that killed me, but hey-ho, it’s a bit moot now, isn’t it?
And, of course, you’ll definitely be putting a couple right up Kim’s back alley in Pyongyang. Again, North Korea probably isn’t there any more (along with the rest of the eastern Pacific seaboard), but we can still throw a few lumps of nutty slack on the fire.
While you’re at it, you’d better unleash Hell (I love that line from Russell Crowe in Gladiator – if you’ve got it in your sub’s video library, it’s highly recommended) on Iran, Pakistan and India. That’ll teach them to develop their own nukes and try to play games with the big boys.
Now I know that the Frogs and the Huns, who gave me so much grief about Brexit, are technically our allies. But I also acknowledge that mistakes can happen in the fog of war. So if your target indicators should erroneously lock on to the Eiffel Tower and the Brandenburg Gate, and should some clumsy rating accidentally stumble against the launch button, well, c’est la vie and so is dast Leben.
Party politics is no longer an issue, of course, but you might consider bowling a nuclear googly at Islington North, just to ensure that the world – or what’s left of it – is rid of Corbyn.
That’s about all I can think of right now. But if you fancy taking a pot-shot at anywhere else, feel free to do so until you run out of missiles.
Then you chaps better lie doggo in the depths for a few months until the dust settles. I’ve ordered a few extra casks of rum to be laid in on your boat, so splice the mainbrace in memory of us all. Down the hatch, shipmates!
Yours with a yo-ho-ho,
Boris
