Has ‘President’ Trump unwittingly given us the solution for how Britain is to survive post-Brexit? This is certainly the opinion of former Tory ‘spin doctor’ Toby Outhouse, who believes that Prime Minister Boris Johnson needs to act quickly and capitalise on his close relationship with the US President to seal a deal. “Having been rebuffed in his recent attempts to buy Greenland, I think that it should it be possible to persuade Trump to actually buy Britain,” Outhouse declared in his regular column in the The Shite. “I know that we don’t have the mineral resources of Greenland, just some exhausted coal mines and a knackered steel industry, but we are well placed in strategic terms: the British Isles could provide Trump with the ideal front-line in his inevitable future trade wars with the EU.” The one time spin doctor – whose advice to former Tory premiers included urging David Cameron to offer an EU referendum in order to buy off UKIP and advising Theresa May to call an election on the basis of an illusory poll lead – believes that, once Johnson has successfully concluded a ‘No deal’ Brexit, a cash deal with Trump would be possible. “It would immediately solve every existing problem facing the UK,” enthuses Outhouse. “There would be no need to worry about stuff like customs tariffs, trade deals and the like – as part of the Trump corporate empire, we’d just do like all multi nationals do: set up our registered office somewhere like Luxembourg, pay only token taxes and have all our imports come in via other Trump companies. They’d be stock transfers rather than imports, so wouldn’t be subject to trade tariffs!”

Outhouse emphasises that the importance of selling the UK to Trump personally, rather than to the United States, pointing out that, if nothing else, it would obviate the ned for Trump to engage in the complex business of negotiating a new UK/US trade deal through congress. “If we simply became, in effect, the fifty first state, then we’d be subject to all those federal laws and constitutional protections which have hampered President Trump in his attempts to make America great again,” he opines. “It would be almost as bad as remaining in the EU!” Only by freeing itself from the straight-jacket of state regulation, the ex-adviser believes, can the UK become a low-tax, low regulation, low wage economy that has done so well in Asia in recent decades. “And who better to oversee such a transformation that a successful billionaire businessman like Trump?” he asks. “OK, I know that people are going to point to things like Trump University and that Atlantic City casino which went bust as proof that Trump is a lousy businessman, but they just don’t understand that their failures were actually shrewd business moves in order to write off tax and other outstanding debts.”

Outhouse has moved to quell fears that the sale of the UK to Trump would inevitably lead to lower living standards and a deterioration of public services, assuring his readers that Trump’s corporate empire will provide cost-effective alternatives to existing services. “Take health care, for instance,” he muses. “We would finally have the opportunity to ditch our antiquated and expensive NHS in favour of universal health insurance – provided by the Trump corporation, of course. It would be so much better: instead of having to pay out for health care you’ll probably never have to use, you could choose instead to buy just the level of care you want, at a price you can afford. I mean, you could just insure against the serious stuff like cancer, and deal with minor stuff like DIY accidents, car crash injuries and septic wounds yourself with sticking plasters and anti-septic cream.” Outhouse argues that other services could similarly be replaced – unemployment benefit by Trump unemployment insurance, publicly funded higher education by a new incarnation of Trump University. “We could also see an overhaul of the rest of the education system,” he says. “With state schools replaced by new educational institutions sponsored by various non-tax paying US commercial giants, with special curriculums geared to preparing students for the real world of work: employment on zero hours contracts and fast food joints, coffee shops and mail order warehouses.”

Not surprisingly, Outhouse’s proposals have been met with hostility by most UK politicians. “If Donald Trump was to buy these islands then it will be because of all that prime real estate he’ll be able to redevelop into golf courses, giant towers, hotels, casinos and the like,” observed Labour back bencher Tim Shed. “After all, if he owns the place then he won’t have all that trouble he had in Scotland when he built that golf course – no pesky local councils to deal with and any uppity local residents can be summarily evicted.” Shed’s reservations have been echoed by Tory back bencher Horace Bungalow, who has expressed his fear that any Trump takeover would be based upon the fact that the UK has an entire indigenous population to be economically exploited. “I believe that there’s a very real possibility that large swathes of the population could be just shipped off to other parts of the Trump ’empire’ in order to provide cheap labour.,” he claimed in a BBC interview. “They could probably provide an acceptable alternative to all those Hispanics and East Europeans who clean his properties and resorts in the US. They’d be far less offensive to his clients – they speak a form of English and don’t have those horrible accents.”

Outhouse remains unmoved by such criticisms, venturing the opinion that the purchase of the UK would, in fact, be welcomed by the Brexit-voting population of the country. “It would eliminate completely our entire political class, whom they supposedly hate, as Parliament would, overnight, become an anachronism,” he says. “They’d at last have that ‘strong governance’ from a ‘strong leader’. Not to mention all that money that will come into the UK as a result of the sale price.” This latter issue, however, has been questioned by critics of the proposal. “Just who would be getting this money?” asks Tim Shed. “I mean, as becoming a corporate subsidiary of a multi national would effectively eliminate the UK state as it now exists, the money couldn’t go to the Treasury. So, would it be shared out among the entire population? I can’t help but suspect that, in reality, the likes of Boris Johnson and his cronies would succeed in trousering the lot.” Outhouse, naturally, rejects such allegations. “Well, it is obvious, isn’t it?” he blustered. “The money would be used to settle the UK’s outstanding debts and the severance settlement with the EU, so that we can start with a clean slate. Look, it would represent a decisive break from Europe and, surely, that is all that matters.”