In a development that has sent shockwaves through the corridors of power and the quieter recesses of the Foreign Office tearoom, the United Kingdom and Japan have signed an £18 billion investment deal, hailed by Downing Street as a 'historic post-Brexit trade victory'. Let us pause to admire the sheer chutzpah of that phrase. It is as though a man who has just set fire to his own house announces he has secured a lucrative contract to sell ash to a volcano manufacturer.
The deal, which involves investments in everything from offshore wind to next-generation semiconductors, was sealed with the kind of pomp and ceremony usually reserved for the signing of treaties that end actual wars, rather than one that merely ends the inconvenience of having to explain to Japanese businessmen what a 'customs union' is. Credit where it is due: our Prime Minister, a man whose grin suggests he has just been told that the laws of thermodynamics are merely suggestions, stood beaming alongside his Japanese counterpart, each man looking as though he had just successfully convinced the other to buy a used car with a mysterious rattle.
But let us not be churlish. £18 billion is not nothing. It is, for context, roughly the amount of money the British government spends annually on maintaining the illusion that the railway network is a functional entity. It is also, I am reliably informed by a man in a pub, exactly 18 billion pounds, which is a number so large it makes the head spin and the wallet weep.
The deal is being hailed as a triumph for 'Global Britain', that plucky little nation that refuses to accept that it is, in fact, a medium-sized island with a weather problem. We are told that this investment will create thousands of jobs, boost our green energy sector, and position the UK as a leader in the technology of the future. All of which is very exciting, provided you ignore the small matter of the fact that we are currently in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis that is making people choose between heating and eating, and that the average worker's wage has the purchasing power of a Monopoly note.
The Japanese, to their credit, are no fools. They have spotted an opportunity to invest in a country where the pound is currently worth slightly less than a promise from a politician. They are buying up our assets at a discount, like tourists at a closing-down sale. It is, in a sense, a reverse Blitz spirit: they are not here for our pluck, but for our plummeting currency.
Still, we must celebrate the small victories. The deal includes a significant investment in the development of 'quantum computing', which I assume is a type of computer that exists in two states simultaneously: working and not working, until observed by a customer, at which point it collapses into a state of utter malfunction. Perfect for British industry.
Let us raise a glass of the finest Japanese whisky (or, failing that, a bottle of Gordon's gin procured from the airport duty-free) to this magnificent achievement. We have traded our sovereignty for a fistful of yen and a promise that our future lies in selling each other things we don't really need. It is the British way. And as the sun sets on the Japanese investment horizon, one cannot help but feel a warm glow of satisfaction, tempered only by the cold realisation that we have just sold a piece of our future to a nation that already owns the copyright to our childhood memories and the patent on our public transport system.
Here's to Global Britain: a country that has finally discovered that the best way to win friends and influence people is to offer them a bargain on everything that isn't nailed down.
