LONDON, UK — Prime Minister Boris Johnson has released new guidelines for Northern parts of the country who are looking to restart their lives and kick-start their businesses. He said, “local leaders may only begin to lift their lockdowns once a cure for death has been found.”

“Once we’ve beaten the final enemy, death, we can slowly begin to re-open over a 100-year period,” Johnson said at a press conference today. “Counties that report just one death for any reason will be forced to stay in lockdown and keep social distancing in place indefinitely. No progress can be made until we have a solution to the eternal question of how to prevent people going to meet their maker.”

“We can’t be too careful in the meantime — we must all be visible, be seen wearing masks and keep spreading our collective fear until this pesky requirement to keep pushing up the daisies has been conquered.”

Johnson said acceptable targets to aim for to get towns and cities re-opened would include:

1. Discovering how to clone hundreds of new Tory voters from “useless” Tory OAPs who are ready to die anyway

2. Successfully transplanting Tory heads onto freshly killed working class Labour bodies, and;

3. Inventing a time machine which goes back to the “spiffing” election year of 1979, enabling millions of Tory landslide voters to transport themselves forward, postponing death itself and keeping the Tories in power for all of eternity.

At publishing time, Johnson had clarified that London would remain open for business regardless.