Cornish Devolution Enters Its Pasty Era As Longtime Champion Steps Down
After 29 years leading Mebyon Kernow, Dick Cole is leaving the post, prompting Cornwall’s paperwork to demand independence immediately.
CORNWALL, Britain, Dick Cole’s departure as Mebyon Kernow leader after 29 years has produced an unexpected constitutional emergency. The county’s official paperwork reportedly declared itself a sovereign nation before anyone located a stapler. It is now refusing to be filed under “England” and has formed a queue outside the nearest cabinet.
It started with a laminated form marked Application for Regional Recognition, which developed what witnesses called “a very firm sense of self”. By Tuesday, it had appointed three supplementary forms as ministers. One still awaits a signature. Another seems to be a receipt for a train sandwich.
“We have been patient for centuries, which is longer than most governments manage,” said Maud Trevithick, provisional secretary of the Cornish Paperwork Liberation Front, from inside a cardboard archive box. “The forms are no longer asking for independence. They want their own filing system and a small flag.”
“At this point, the forms are requesting a separate filing system and a small flag.”
The paperwork has since issued a constitution made entirely of footnotes. Cornwall would keep its roads, its weather and the seagulls that regard outdoor meals as a planning failure. Britain may continue using the word “pasty”, subject to a 14-page cultural impact assessment. There are, apparently, forms for that too.
A local pasty spoke through a tiny brass letterbox set into its crimping and said it had mixed feelings about becoming a national symbol. “I support self-determination,” it said. “But I do not want to end up on a commemorative plate, especially one with gravy on it.” The pasty would not provide a surname, citing pastry privacy regulations.
That left the government to intervene. The Department of Constitutional Tidiness, a fictional office established after a filing cabinet began answering questions in a Welsh accent, sent Cornwall a form asking whether it was a county, nation, peninsula or “other”. Cornwall returned it with every box ticked. Someone had added another box in the margin: “obviously”.
Cole’s actual departure means Mebyon Kernow will now have a different leader after nearly three decades, while a committee of animated road signs assesses the consequences of his long campaign. “Persistence has consequences,” said its chair, Signpost 4B. “Mostly paperwork. Occasionally a ceremonial traffic cone.” At dusk, the forms voted to stay open until the next bank holiday, when they intend to declare independence from alphabetical order.