Is much derided Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the verge of providing a long-term solution to Britain’s vegetable shortages? With the UK facing the prospect of vegetable rationing and spivs lurking around shopping centres offering housewives black market root vegetables, Corbyn is set to launch a Green Paper on the future of vegetable cultivation in Britain. “It’s one in the eye for all those ‘Blairite’ bastards saying that Jeremy has lost the plot because he wasn’t opposing Brexit and Article Fifty enough,” top Corbyn aide Tommy Rott told The Sleaze. “The fact is that he’s been preoccupied with the whole vegetable shortage business – they’re all going to look pretty foolish once the Green Paper is published!” Rott also pointed out that the vegetable famine was actually directly related to Brexit and that Corbyn’s plan was the first step in the Labour leader’s strategy for defining a new long-term future for the UK in a post-Brexit world. “These shortages are the result of poor weather in places like Spain where our greens are imported from,” he explained. “We’re clearly over-reliant on vegetable imports from EU countries – even without these shortages, their price will inevitably go up once we are out of the EU. If we are to remain an independent nation outside of Europe we must become self-sufficient in vegetables. We can’t be held to ransom over our five-a-day!”
Ironically, Corbyn’s plan for future vegetable production reportedly takes inspiration from wartime austerity policies. “It’s true that Jeremy will propose that every available piece of open land should be cultivated for the production of vegetables, just like during the war” says Rott. “Of course, back then, that was a Labour initiative, too, in order to keep the country fed in the face of fascist aggression – a bit like today, really, with Trump in the White House.” Under the plans traffic roundabouts would no longer be blooming with flowers, instead sporting runner beans, peas and cabbages, public parks, school playing fields and even the central reservations of motorways and dual carriageways would be put under cultivation. “People don’t realise just how much unused, potentially arable, land there is in this country,” enthuses Rott. “I mean, it’s just sitting there at moment, doing nothing. At best, in the case of parks and playing fields, dogs are crapping on it and kids running around turning it into mud! I know that the ‘Blairites’ and their ilk will bang on about how we’re depriving our youth of opportunities to play and get fit, but, for God’s sake, they can go back to playing in the streets like they used to, can’t they? It’s a working class tradition! Besides, with all the vegetables we’ll be growing, they’ll have vitamins coming out of their ears!”
Most controversially, the Green Paper will propose that all back gardens, allotments and market gardens be nationalised. “We just can’t take the risk of small scale private vegetable production falling into criminal hands,” the aide says. “Already we’ve had reports of lettuces, carrots and even parsnips grown in back gardens being sold by black market spivs for exorbitant prices. I’m afraid that if people want to preserve their back gardens, they’ll just have to pave them over so that no illicit greens can be cultivated in them.” Rott understands that many in the world of conservation might have reservations as Corbyn’s plans ould mean the destruction of the habitats of many wild animals, possibly leading to their extinction in the UK. “It’s very sad, I know, but some sacrifices always have to be made in times of emergency,” he observes. “But look at it from another perspective: most of the animals which will lose their habitats will be predators – they prey on far cuter looking furry little animals. Do we really want carnivorous and exploitative bastards like that lurking around our countryside? I don’t think so.”
Critics of Corbyn’s leaked Green Paper proposals, however, are less than impressed, accusing the Labour leader of trying to exploit unfounded public fears in order to create a non-existent crisis for votes. “These stories about a vegetable shortage have largely been whipped up by the press,” Conservative back bencher Hugh Jampton told The Sleaze. “It’s outrageous that the Labour party should be trying to scaremonger the electorate on the basis of this nonsense.” Jampton dismisses out of hand stories of spivs selling lettuces illicitly grown in secret greenhouses. “It’s the stuff of sitcoms,” he says. “I can also categorically deny that the government has any plans to introduce vegetable rationing. Contrary to press reports, ration books are not being printed and people will not be restricted to half a cabbage and a pod of peas a month.” He also rejected suggestions that, just as powdered eggs were introduced in the second world war, the government were planning to introduce powdered vegetables as a substitute for the real thing. “It’s an absolutely ludicrous idea,” he remarked. “The very idea of just adding water to make a green and unpleasant, not to mention inedible, mess doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Some elements of the green movement are somewhat more enamoured of Corbyn’s proposals, though. “It really is quite brilliant,” gushes Lord Johnny Porridge, a former leading light of Greenpeace, who once cleared the organisation’s AGM with a huge, evil smelling, vegan fart. “With so much land under cultivation, there will be no capacity for the farming of livestock for their meat – Britain will have no choice but to go vegetarian!” Porridge sees other benefits to the scheme. “With nothing but fields, there will be no need for the proles to come out of the cities and sully the countryside with their filthy presence,” he enthuses. “People might think that putting our National Parks under the plough is a heavy price to pay, but if it discourages the masses from venturing outside of their urban squalor, it will be well worth it.” The peer has also expressed his hopes that, with fwere working class people driving out of urban areas, entire motorways and dual carriageways, not just their central reservations, are torn up and used to grow vegetables. Rott believes such plans could be a possibility. “Jeremy certainly envisages a car-free future – they will be replaced by airships powered by the increased amounts of methane gas generated by the UK’s universal vegetarian diet,” he says. “He truly is striving to create a socialist utopia – there will be no need for industry of any kind in the UK, as working on the land will provide full employment. We’ll also be able to stop worrying about global warming and embrace increased temperatures as a way of growing more exotic fruits and vegetables, and the increased high winds as a way of generating clean electricity! He’s thought of everything!” According to Rott, having solved the vegetable crisis, created full employment and forced healthy eating on the UK, Corbyn is now pushing ahead with plans for achieving world peace through jam-making.
