Brown: Commonwealth to be Dissolved

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sent shockwaves around the world today with a terse announcement that Her Majesty's Government has petitioned Buckingham Palace to assent to the immediate dissolution of the Commonwealth.

Speaking to a stunned audience in Stockholm, Sweden, where he is attending a conference of European leaders, Brown asserted his government's view that Britain's future lies with its European partners rather than with the vestigial remnants of a commonwealth rooted in Victorian imperialism.

"We cannot forget" he told a large group of reporters gathered for the hastily called, early morning press conference, "that the British Commonwealth is the dying relic of Victoria's Empire". This government wishes to distance itself from the unbridled militarism that swept across two-thirds of the globe, brazenly subjugating defenceless third world nations and confiscating their natural resources."

"I have been to Buckingham Palace and asked Her Majesty to affix her signature to an order-in-council prepared by my ministers that will act as an instrument to begin the immediate dismantling and dissolution of the British Commonwealth."

Calls to the office of Mr David Cameron, leader of the British Conservative Party, have not been returned but a contact inside the party reports to Blighty's Blog that Mr Cameron is "speechless and frothing at the mouth with distress".

At the conference was the Swedish bureau chief for the BBC (Blighty's Blog Correspondents) Sven Parilofol. Sven relayed his story through Blighty's Blog's European headquarters in Whopping Lye, England. A tape filed with the report contains some candid comments made by Brown after the conference microphone was turned off. Among some muffled and distorted audio captured by our correspondent, Mr Brown is heard to say: "all these bloody colonials can just sod off for all I care."

Footnote from the editor at Blighty's Blog headquarters in Canada:

Canadian colonials may be aware that the British government has fought against the indexing of British pensions paid to expats throughout the Commonwealth. After many and repeated legal avenues ending in doors slamming shut, the British government has finally won the last battle. Expats hoping to enjoy the same pension rights as expats in non-Commonwealth countries, have been handed a very final legal instruction to "now sod off!"