The Chancellor's Growth Plan has been dramatically leaked from No. 11 Downing Street. The police have been brought in and are interviewing staff in a search for the source of the leak.
As revealed by a red top newspaper that we have decided not to name, The Growth Plan seems to be a sheet of lined paper ripped from a Poundland exercise book. At the top, the words 'My World Class Growth Plan' are written in crayon and heavily underlined. There is a doodle of a spider and a spider's web, and another doodle of a heart with an arrow in it and the legend RR+KS. But the page is otherwise completely blank.
The government says that the claim that the Growth Plan is a blank sheet of paper is demonstrably false, and spread by neo-right-wing bad actors, amplified by social media hacktivists. The government has not denied that the document is authentic.
The government has yet to deliver any growth. Businesses are cutting staff, millionaires are leaving Britain, and high street stores are closing branches. Government borrowing continues to rise, and the IMF says it isn't upset with the UK, just very, very disappointed. So having a growth plan would seem to be quite important.
The government says that growth is all about confidence. The growth plan isn't a blank sheet. The plan is written in invisible ink to fool the paparazzi. The growth plan is real and good and very visible and easy to read if you iron the page. The plan says that inflation and rising costs and tariffs and recession and stagflation and poorly educated, and sick workers need not reduce business activity. The plan shows that Britain can look forward to a rose-tinted future that is every bit as good as its rose-tinted past.
'It's all about creative destruction,' said a spokesman. 'In order to build a prosperous new economy, we have to clear out the old, failing businesses first. We must get rid of the pound shops, and charity shops, and betting shops, and tattoo parlours, and scrap metal dealers, and bogus language schools, and crappy coffee shops, and dodgy barber shops, and convenience stores that are only used for money laundering.
'Then we have cleared the way for the high-tech electronics companies, the internet start-ups, the knowledge intensive businesses, the AI enabled lobbying companies, and the gigafactories, because they all sound really good. These new businesses will deliver the growth, and they will make big profits, and they will pay lots of tax to the UK government. And they definitely won't transfer profits offshore, or game the system, or decide to relocate overseas. That's the plan, anyway.
