Government says new interns must have actually been inside a Wetherspoons

After the UK government announced that all new civil service interns must be from working-class backgrounds, anyone without first-hand experience of a Wetherspoons will be immediately withdrawn from consideration.

The move comes after an internal audit revealed that 87% of current civil servants can confidently pronounce ‘quinoa’, and own a reusable coffee cup.

At a press conference held in the artisan gin bar at the Treasury, Baroness Felicity Pembroke-Harrington-Fitzroy-Smythe, Minister for Social Mobility, declared, “The civil service is run by too many individuals who think a ‘chippy tea’ is Earl Grey served in a cracked china cup.

“We are woefully unprepared to empathise with people who consider Greggs a legitimate lunch option, rather than a quirky treat for Instagram. We need people who understand real struggles, like having to do a weekly shop at Iceland.”

One senior government advisor confessed, “We’ve been writing policies about public transport for years, yet half the team thinks a ‘Night Bus’ is a Harry Potter reference.”

Under the new scheme, applicants will be required to submit proof of at least two of the following: a grandparent who worked in a coal mine, factory, or fish finger processing plant; a family WhatsApp group that devolves into chaos over Love Island; a childhood photo at a Butlins holiday camp; or the ability to identify a scratchcard as a financial investment strategy.

In a pilot program last year, a group of working-class interns revolutionised a Whitehall policy meeting by introducing the concept of ‘just getting on with it’. Witnesses say the interns rejected a 72-slide PowerPoint in favour of ‘writing things down on the back of a fag packet’.

One pilot intern, Simon Williams from Doncaster, revealed, “I told ’em, ‘If you don’t know what it’s like waiting six hours in A&E with a broken toe, maybe don’t cut NHS funding?’ They wrote it down like I’d pitched the Magna Carta.”

Oxford and Cambridge universities have reported a sharp increase in applications for their ‘Advanced Street Smarts and Social Mobility’ courses, hastily set up for students eager to prove their working-class credentials.

The government plans to introduce ‘life struggle workshops’ for existing civil servants, including practical modules on how to shop at Aldi, living on a prepayment meter, and a field trip to a Poundland.

As Baroness Pembroke-Harrington-Fitzroy-Smythe says, “It’s time we balanced the decision-making table. And that means adding people who don’t refer to their kitchen as a ‘culinary space’.”

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