Britain Still Well-Placed To Weather Recession, Insists Governor-General Brown

Britain is likely to weather the recession better than any other country in the Third World, announced a remarkably upbeat Gordon Brown today.

The prime minister’s analysis is based on a report from the International Monetary Fund, which predicted that, of all the developed countries, Britain was the worst-placed to deal with the global economic downturn.

“At first glance, the IMF report may appear to present a somewhat gloomy outlook for the country,” said Mr Brown, resplendent in a solar topee. “However, you have to remember that Britain has long since ceased to be a developed nation. We now treat our own workforce little better than the sweating Malayan coolies back in the glorious days of Empire. We are cramming everyone who can spell their name through our universities despite the appalling scarcity of graduate-level jobs, just as we did in the Raj. And we have successfully reduced the sick and unemployed to a sub-caste of Untouchables, loathed and ignored by all.

“Meanwhile, our infrastructure is in terminal decline, our businesses are in the hands of asset-stripping foreign companies who ruthlessly bleed wealth out of our economy. Power is jealously guarded by a remote professional class, who maintain their aloofness from the natives by a combination of empty promises, jingoistic appeals to nationalism and vague threats about extremists wanting to kill us all in our beds. This control is maintained by eroding civil liberties and hidden taxation, and backed up by an ever-growing police force accountable to nobody.

“So it’s completely unrealistic for the IMF to compare us to Western nations,” he concluded, brandishing his swagger stick. “If you think of Britain as a southern-hemisphere banana republic that has somehow washed up on the shores of Europe, though, you’ll soon see things in the right perspective. Chin chin!”