Seemingly out of reasonable ideas for why the UK should keep sculptures removed from Greece in the 19th century, the Prime Minister has invoked the ancient law of finders keepers, much to Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s dismay.

‘Legally speaking, he’s got us by the balls,’ Mitsotakis conceded in a press conference. Originally, Mitsotakis and Sunak had been scheduled to discuss the status of the sculptures alongside a series of other global issues. However, the British PM snubbed his counterpart the day before the meeting was due to take place.

‘I thought if I cancelled, he might forget about them,’ said Sunak outside a presser at the British Museum.

‘But then he kept going on about them, so I played my trump card,’ he added, signing off his speech with: ‘It’s not my fault Greece lost its marble,’ delivered with all the smoothness of a Hermes driver navigating a new build.

The UK has always resisted returning foreign artefacts taken during the colonial era. Even with the British Empire reluctantly disbanded, retaining historical relics is viewed as vital to honouring our tradition of successfully robbing nations of their cultural heritage.

‘Were we to return the Elgin Marbles, it would set a dangerous precedent in that we’d have to give back all the other stuff we borrowed,’ said Ellen Cartwright, The British Museum’s Head of Contested Curiosities.

We asked how many such items might be involved. ‘God, I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Lots. Thousands. Thousands and thousands. We stopped counting. Plus, we don’t know where most of their, sorry, our stuff is anyway. In boxes somewhere, most of it. In any case, a lot of it’s probably been pinched. For all we know, the original owners could have stolen a lot of it back already.’

We asked if this might be a good time to do an inventory. ‘We don’t have time for all that,’ she said. ‘It would require far too much work. In any case, we’re too busy issuing apologies for taking them in the first place.’