Why stop at giving shipless start-ups contracts for ferries? Let’s have Greggs make Brexit planes too

Chris Grayling sure knows how to thump a tub. The Brexit-backing transport secretary has been out and about in the media saying he “makes no apology” for handing a £13.8m contract for the provision of extra ferries in the event he and his pals deliver up a no-deal Brexit to a company that has no ships and no trading history. And why should he? The transport secretary says he’s bally well backing Britain. Huzzah for that!

He’s showing that can-do spirit New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, whom Donald Trump appointed as ambassador to Britain for some reason (clue: he’s a big Republican Party donor), says we need a little more of to sail off into the sunlit uplands. His team won four games this year, so we really should take heed.

That being the case, and now we’ve got the ferries sorted, let’s think planes.

Airbus, with its inconvenient requirement for the just-in-time supply of parts, keeps raising questions about the future of its UK plants because of the potential effect on its business of its bits and pieces getting stuck in the no-deal lorry park the government is planning for half of Kent.

But I’ve got an idea for Calamity Chris if he gets landed with the job of finding an alternative manufacturer. Let’s have Greggs make our aircraft.

The baker has a successful trading history, which might count against it during the “careful vetting” process the minister says he has his civil servants undertake before awarding contracts, like the one Seaborne Freight got for the ferries it doesn’t currently have.

But it doesn’t have any plane manufacturing plants, or any experience of designing and making them. So it ticks most of the required boxes.

“We’re sorry, but our Pasty Plane has developed a few issues which may delay take off. Our in-flight catering staff will be serving a round of our famous sausage rolls while these are resolved.”

Now that’s a plane I’d fly in.

Wait, what’s that you say? Chris insisted on a competitive tender for Greggs Grayling Air’s catering and builder Balfour Beatty has won it? Ah well, at least their people should know something about making tea.

Let’s move on to the military. That’s going to have an important role after Brexit. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson will be wanting gun boats at the ready so the navy can go out and defend the East India Company and shoot up anyone with melanin in their skin if they show signs of forgetting their proper place in the new world order.

Making weapons is something we’re pretty good at, but our existing contractors might run into the same problems as Airbus if no deal becomes a reality. They also have global supply chains.

Sod it. Let’s give the contract for making warships to Amazon. We’re about to become part of the pax Americana after all. Trade secretary Liam Fox is just gagging to get its chlorinated chicken into Tesco (so it isn’t just him who’ll be gagging).

To sweeten his Trump trade deal and get it signed off, it makes sense to give an American company the job of making our warships. Amazon has no shipyards, but it does at least know how to source stuff. That ought to come in very handy. If it runs into problems with the assembly we could always ask Lego to help out.

As for the guns the army relies on? Well Epic Games is showing off some neat designs in the latest edition of Fortnite. What could possibly go wrong?

Now, how about rail? Given the traffic jams that will be created as all those lorries pile up in Kent’s customs waiting area, we’re going to need the railways to get around. Hell, the 3.1 per cent fare rise announced in England and Wales could actually start to look like value for money, which would be a first.

I was trying to think of a suitably ridiculous suggestion for someone to operate the trains to cap off this column, but given the muppets Calamity Chris has in charge right now, there doesn’t seem to be any need for change there. They’re ideally suited to the Britain he and his Conservatives are creating for us. It’s a Britain that’d make even those Jets look good. Perhaps it’s time we followed that team’s example and fired the coaching staff.