Political Acumen

THERESA May, what can I say,

What have you done to us.

I thought your job to govern

Not stir up this awful fuss.

Leaving pensioners to shiver

And babes without a nurse.

I thought your job to govern,

Not bestow on us a curse.

It’s a funny word this Brexit

And this EU place in Brussels.

It seems we want to free ourselves

From arguments and tussles.

Will we have left the Golden Age

No longer taking centre stage?

Will no-one want to buy our shoes

And go elsewhere to pick and choose.

And did we all miscalculate

When deciding we would leave

For now EU won’t tell us

What they have up their sleeve.

We won’t become despondent

Take up another tack,

And just remember old John Bull

And wave the Union Jack.

We don’t want those EU breakfasts

Nor your dodgy export wines,

With all this global warming

We can nurture English vines.

We don’t want your equine chops

Nor your fat escargot dips,

We’re mostly vegetarian,

And we have oven chips.

We don’t want your sauerkraut

Nor wishy-washy beers

We’ve got our English cider

The nation’s drink that cheers.

We don’t want your Belgian chocolates

This evil trade must cease.

We’re very figure conscious now

Lest we become obese.

We don’t want your citrus teas

On drinks we need not stint

For we can always grow our own

And change to peppermint.

And we can fish our waters

And keep it for ourselves.

We can grow our peas and taters

Stock up our pantry shelves.

You think we’re short of fossil fuels

Across the English Channel.

But we take out a tile or two –

Put in a solar panel.

We don’t want petroleum

We’ve wind farms here, en masse.

We can do our fracking anywhere.

Release our own free gas.

We know that we can hold our own –

Collect our golden honey.

If things should go from bad to worse

We can always eat a bunny.

Alison Gardiner

Stroud