Beware the coming of Jacob Rees-Mogg and his Brexit apocalypse

Perhaps Brexit really is the long foretold apocalypse. Since the dawn of the 21st century, each passing year, it seems, brings with it predictions of the end of the world or at least civilisation as we know it (whichever comes first). Certainly, many of these have come from those types of sects and gatherings that think The Handmaid’s Tale is a model for modern living or believe the date of the planet’s demise is stitched into the verses of Jeremiah.

We have come to regard those souls who scan the skies looking for portents and auguries about the end of days with affectionate condescension. None of them, though, appears to have predicted Brexit. There were no presentiments of its occurrence and the vain stupidity of its authors has outstripped even the most demented ravings of the doomsday cults.

Over the years, I’ve dabbled in a wee bit of numerology myself. And I can tell you that close study of the word Brexit reveals some startling patterns. For instance, if you convert each of the letters in Brexit to the numbers where they occur in the alphabet then you arrive at a figure of 78. Seven plus eight equals 15, which is the sum of the 12 tribes of Israel and the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. We’ve hardly even begun to comprehend the curses beginning to escape the Brexit Pandora’s box.

Who knows how this will end as we move irresistibly towards a no-deal scenario? I can see skirmishes between British hauliers and border guards at every checkpoint in Europe. How long then before violence ensues? The Falklands conflict started in less fraught circumstances than these. How long before prime minister Jacob Rees-Mogg takes it upon himself to restore the glory days of the 18th century and empower a new East India Company, supported by opportunistic bands of state-backed privateers to annexe strategically important islands as advantageous trading posts? This will mark the beginning of what will come to be known as the Brexit wars: the bastard child of the war of Jenkins’ Ear and the opium wars.

In desperation, the new prime minister will seek to rekindle old alliances in the powder keg that is the Middle East while our mad former foreign secretary will reinvent himself as Boris of Arabia with predictably catastrophic effects.

Prime minister Rees-Mogg will seek to revive the indomitable spirt of old Britannia by issuing a rallying call to the country. In the long and bitterly cold post-Brexit winter that will ensue he will oblige us all to hunker down and embrace a more austere and frugal existence. It will build character, he will tell us. A period of martial law will be imposed just to ensure we all get the message.

I would advise us all to prepare for the Brexit apocalypse by making a few sustainable tweaks to our gilded lifestyles. If we all get into the habit of practising these now then we may be able to remove some of the sting from the oncoming winter. By doing so, we may be able to meet the Rees-Mogg, post-Brexit austerity demands head-on.

I’d start off simply by getting the NHS to issue one of yon NutriBullets to every household. I myself was gifted one of these miraculous contraptions recently. I’ve now got more fruit in my fridge than the man from Del Monte and have solved the problem of making that previously insuperable leap from five-a-week to five-a-day painlessly. The cost of these devices would be more than offset by the concomitant relief of pressure on the NHS. In winter-time, the addition of a responsible quantum of vodka or Bacardi into your NutriBullet cocktail would be permitted.

In the early stages of a Brexit winter, there will be many casualties and this may lead to a run on spaces at the cemetery and a great deal of social distress. I think we all simply need to take a deep breath here and get back to basics. I’ve always donated to bird charities and have lately come round to the idea of donating my organs when I die and having what’s left of me buried in a cardboard coffin in a verdant woodland glade. So why not combine the two ideas?

What would be the harm in perhaps volunteering to have your corpse strung up in your back garden so that the chookie burdies can fill their wee boots with what is left of you? Your loved ones would get to say a long, lingering farewell instead of just hammering you into the ground and departing after a few verses of the 23rd Psalm. And if you’re worried about matters of taste, well… isn’t everyone a lot less squeamish these days about rotting corpses thanks to all those zombie apocalypse films? They seem thankfully to have stripped away our irrational fears about human mortality and fleshy decay.

In view of the impending Brexit apocalypse, I think we are now all agreed that universal credit and the bedroom tax have been good things. I’d now go a stage further and compel all owners of private dwellings, under martial law, to fill their spare bedrooms with homeless people. Why, they could even be pressed into domestic service to ensure sustainability and sound economic outcomes.

Obviously members of the royal family would continue to be exempt because we’d need them to be in fine fettle to revive the spirit of the Blitz.

• Kevin McKenna is an Observer columnist