Please translate to American English from the British the following: OH **UK!

The cover of the most recent Economist (March 16 - 22nd 2019) has in large type

OH **UK! Whatever next?

From the context, this is clearly a comment on the current Brexit mess.

Is ** UK related to F * * K, and if so, how? Did the Economist transpose C and U to be more polite? Or, more likely, does UK refer to the United Kingdom, and if so, how do we interpret ** ?

This should be obvious, and I will probably hit myself on the head when it is explained, but for now the inscrutable Brits have me baffled.

Googling **UK gets me many referenced to the UK (the nation), but no explanation of the **.

Solution 1:

The article is pretty clearly about the UK and it's also portraying a situation where "oh fuck" would be an appropriate thing to say. However, they can't use "fuck" and still have the joke work. So "**UK" could stand for "fcuk" (it wouldn't be the first time a joke like this was made) or it could stand for "phuk", which is basically an alternate slang spelling of "fuck". Or it might not stand for any letters in particular; the point is for you to know it means "oh fuck".

(I don't think this has anything to do with British English.)