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EU commissioners have today warned that Britain will have to change the name of a popular vegetable if it quits the union.
Under international trade rules, Brussels could and would ban the British from describing the brassica as being from Brussels in what is being seen as the opening salvo of a tit-for-tat trade war.
Prime Minister David Cameron was quick to seize the latest threat as a reason to vote remain in the forthcoming referendum.
“This shows that leaving the EU is an immediate threat to the traditional British Christmas dinner”, he announced to the nation.
“Eating a Brussels sprout is all about stuffing something deeply unpleasant down your throat in a misguided belief you’re doing the right thing.
“So the relationship between sprouts and EU membership is clear.”
However, the Leave campaign have reacted with fury at the decree, with supremo Boris Johnson calling it a “blisteringly bananas bunch of Brussels baloney.”
Describing sprouts as being as British as fish and chips, Spag Bol and chicken Korma, Johnson went on to paint a picture of a post-Brexit future where children could eat sprouts whenever they wanted unencumbered by Eurocrat red tape.
Johnson spoke of a post-Brexit future where happy children in short trousers would skip to the corner shop and buy a bag of sprouts for a shiny ha’penny before eagerly devouring them on a sun-kissed, grassy hillside far from the horrors of Bongo-Bongo land.
Meanwhile, the Dutch government have announced plans to restrict British access to orange carrots in the event of Brexit, claiming that if the British want to see in the dark, they can vote to remain.
