The Brexit Buccaneers

As David Davis stands in Teesport, proclaiming a "new global race to the top in quality and standards" I hear the clashing of cutlasses, and curses in the rigging. Bands of Brexiters, all still pretending allegiance to the same unchanged flag, are beating the bejesus out of each other while we watch.

The official line exemplified by Davis's stirring words is that leaving the EU won't lead to attacks on employment rights, environmental standards or the like. Our sunlit uplands will be British sunlit uplands, with a better standard of grass than we're used to, tended by horny handed children of toil (of assorted genders) who have literally never had it so good. Once we are free of the European shackles, the story goes, we can set new standards and show the world how it's done.

Below decks though, a band of scurvy Brexiters have hatched their own plans to slash taxes, standards and regulations, then sail out into the cruel world to make our, their, fortune. They'll still salute the same flag whenever they have to though. For now.

Those at the captain's table maintain the highest of standards, proposing good relationships with our erstwhile Friends and Partners, to make sure that bankers can maintain a foothold in foreign capitals and do what they do. Those below the salt, however, especially those who have recently lost a rank or failed to gain preferment where they believe it to be their right, are mutinous. If they could, they'd weigh anchor and sail this island off into a privateers' ocean.

"You could not insert a fine blade between myself, the captain and the purser," cries the ship's Bulldog, while the dark side of the mess imagines uses to which a fine blade could be put. After the purser has been lost somewhere, and one of their own has taken his place.

The chaplain never ceases telling them of the beautiful life he will provide for their families' animals, how sparkling their little patches will be, but Paterson the farmer's boy has other ideas. His people never looked after him - he ended up on this ship after all. When you're used to hard biscuit with worms in it why would you wish better on those who consider themselves your betters?

The New World once boasted giant tortoises on which, the story goes, a whole ship's company could feast, but now they're gone (or protected by friends of the chaplain) and the Americas now offer a lucrative line in plump capons reared in hell then spruced up like a prize cockerel on a scrubbed deck for the families back home

The captain might be a chaplain herself, or the next worst thing, the vicar's daughter, and assembles them every Sunday to tell them that things will be better below decks, the best, though she doesn't seem to get down there with her ideas.

The Bulldog is the real disappointment! They thought he was one of them, but now he's talking about playing by the Frenchies' rules, keeping close to the moneybags, so that our rich and theirs can mingle and make money together by going out among the people. They tell us there's a thing called a mortgage, which will help us Take Back Control™ over homes for the cubs; and a pension, to keep a man in victuals rather than just watch his peg leg rot while what's left of his family shout at him.

Young Jacob though...

He's not that young in truth, but he hasn't had the spirit beaten out of him yet (more's the pity, spits the Bulldog, passing by) and he has a dream. The landlubbers, even their bankers, have only a small pot of money to spread among so many people. The real gold is out there, across the open sea, to be taken as you find it, with no heed paid to rules. That Jacob lad will go far. And we'll probably have to kill him at some point.

I'll call them the #Buccaneers.