English Requirement Will Not Apply To Britain’s Lower Orders, Admits May

Whoops of joy echoing from breakfast tables across the home counties at the news that the ability to speak middle-class English would not only be a requirement for staying in the UK, but would be retrospectively applied, abruptly faded as it became apparent that the rule would only be applied to immigrants coming from outside the EU.

Theresa May, the spacesuit-wearing Home Secretary, was announcing plans to make the ability to speak English at a level appropriate to a skilled worker a mandatory visa requirement.

“For a brief, wonderful moment I had a glorious vision of all these awful chavs, those ghastly creatures from Liverpool and the guttural peasants who clutter up the picture-postcard village in Cornwall where I have a perfectly adorable holiday cottage being rounded up with cattle prods, herded into containers and shipped in bulk to China, where they might be put to good use as dam-building material or something,” sighed Nicole Vaux, a corporate image advisor from Henley. “Then I’d be able to rest assured that the house and grounds would be kept absolutely spick and span by some nice, hardworking Poles or Lithuanians for far less wages than those surly yokels, Mr. and Mrs. Warleggan.”

Her friend Pippa Buckmaster, a Harley Street aura consultant, added that her greatest fear was that other countries might implement similar measures.

“After that ghastly parvenu Jim Potter – nothing more than a jumped-up builder - and his plain and frankly blotchy wife Jackie sold up and opened a tacky bar in Lloret del Mar, the whole street held a wine and cheese evening to celebrate,” she explained. “The last thing we want is for them to come crawling back again, no doubt clutching dreadful straw donkeys and wearing half-unravelled sombreros.”

“And if that awful Berlusconi and his gangster crew seriously expect me to learn their silly jibber-jabber before allowing me to enrich Italy’s cultural diversity by retiring to Tuscany, well he can jolly well think again,” she added. “It’s just so petty. As we all know, foreigners understand English perfectly well if you shout at them properly.”