What’s in a name?

Ah, happy is the potter at his wheel, especially so given that none but Potters may ply his trade. ‘Oh, wonder!’ As the famous Bard of Brussels once wrote, ‘How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in ’t!’ And apt it is to remember Guillaume Shakespeare as today we celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Luvvies’ Revolt. Until their brave intervention there was a risk that the savages who sought to tear our union asunder might prevail but once the noble heroes of stage and screen stiffened their sinews, we were saved.

Many mistook the aims of the EU, thinking it a malign perversion of our rights to self-determination. Far from it, in fact the opposite, as you now have total self-determination from birth – your birth name dictates the guild to which you belong and to which you are enrolled even as you take your first breath. Now, thanks to the progressive policies of Europa our jobs are saved forever. As the great man also wrote ‘That which we call a rose, by any other name would never smell so sweet.’ Were it not for the pioneering Cumberbitches almost anybody would be able to get an Equity card. Instead, however, we have the certainty of protectionism taken to its logical conclusion. Only a true-born Dimbleby may dimble on the tellybox and only the Coogan clan may lampoon for profit. Talk about creative.

Once it was only the French who insisted that bread bakers must have degrees but soon enough this splendid notion had spread and the wholesale adoption of glorious closed-shop professionalism became commonplace across the European Union. With only twenty-eight members back then and with minimal influence on world trade it was essential that the union be enlarged as quickly as possible. Were it not for the intervention of the thespians and their band of light-footed lovelies Europa may have been limited to only the old European continent, instead of reaching out to touch our immediate neighbours in New Imperial China and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Your name is truly your fortune and everybody is happier for that. The Potters, as previously mentioned, obviously, but also the Carpenters, Smiths and Taylors wear their jobs with pride. Naturally, some older names have been lost – not much call for Wrights and Coopers any more, but there has been a boom in Deed Poll conversions and marriages of convenience to attain treasured appellations such as Banker, Financier and the splendid multi-barrelled Climate-Change-Scientist and Social-Justice-Warrior.

But birthrights in some professions are sacrosanct and nominative determinism is jealously protected in law; only a Camerosborne may vote in council on behalf of Brexile Island where political dissidents are re-educated and of course only a Kinnock or a Blair can ever take the presidency of the whole union. Keep Europe European, they said as they rose as one to support the legendary Kapoor, who prophetically proclaimed ‘Europe or death!’ Ironically, as it turned out, for on this septic Brexile Island, you can have both.