LONDON – In a stunning victory for the Soviet Union, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced today that he is Josef Stalin’s bastard son and congratulated Parliament for declaring the United Kingdom a communist satellite state.

The revelation came after weeks of leftist wins in Britain, including the establishment of mandatory identification cards, a nationwide ban on public smoking, provisions for a camera network to monitor all cars on all highways, and a High Court ruling that allowed health administrators to deny medicine to cancer patients based on their postal code.

Blair said the apparent death of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 was a ruse concocted to distract enemies of the revolution while Stalin’s progeny took over the West.

“Daddy’s memory is still alive in the hearts of comrades across Europe and North America,” Blair said. “Without firing a single shot, the U.S.S.R. has found its way into all of our homes and countries.”

The Communists sealed their victory with the Feb. 15 court ruling against Ann Marie Rogers, a breast cancer victim who was denied access to the drug Herceptin by Britain’s tax-funded health service.

While Herceptin is available in other towns, the administrator for Rogers’ clinic in Swindon deemed the drug experimental and prohibitively expensive. In a move that delighted admirers of Stalin’s bread lines, Judge David Bean sided with the clinic.

“The question for me is whether Swindon’s policy is irrational and thus unlawful,” Bean wrote. “I cannot say it is.”

The decision came just two days after a House of Commons vote that paves the way for mandatory national identification cards, which will contain fingerprints and iris scans.

In his first attempt at the Politburo style of saying one thing and meaning another, Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said he predicted the plan would “ensure that, for each of us, our identity is secure and protected.”

David Davis, an anti-revolutionary Tory in Parliament, called the cards “the most attractive possible target for every fraudster, terrorist, confidence trickster and hacker on the planet.”

No word was immediately available about plans to try Davis for his purported fealty to Czar Nicholas II.

Authorities said, however, that they will be sure to monitor Davis’ license plate for expired registration stickers using the roadway camera network set to begin operating in June.

Each camera can monitor 3,600 license plates per hour, making it “difficult, if not impossible, to travel by road without being captured by the cameras,” according to the Detroit News.

The monitoring program is of course designed to nab ruthless terrorist suspects, but it will also be employed to combat the growing national security threat presented by drivers without car insurance.

Similarly, the new nationwide smoking ban targets the cigarette-wielding scofflaws who sully Britain’s otherwise classy pubs. The measure was lifted from previous Communist uprisings in California, New York City, and Summit County, Ohio.

In related news, the late Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev rose from the grave and said the developments in Britain – coupled with warrantless wiretapping and a free prescription drug giveaway in the United States – had validated his 1957 prediction that “your grandchildren will live under socialism.”

*Note: Aside from the fictitious Blair remark about Daddy Joe, the other direct quotes in this satire were drawn from recent New York Times accounts – regrettably with no need for embellishment.

Adam Milasincic is a senior journalism major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].