4.
The raven haired witch Kendall shrieked and rent her garments in fury. The cheek of it! First the left-wing press, or what remained of it, dismissed her as a Tory cross-dresser. Then the misogynist Tories wrote her off as a serial loser and now they were asking about her weight. How dare they? When did they ever ask a male candidate such personal questions? Anyway she was a dedicated follower of the Fearnley-Whittingstall low carb snail porridge diet. Before that she was a long-term user of the Jamie Oliver school lunch plus regime. She had nothing to fear from their questions. Vile scum. She would ban such questions when she was elected supreme leader. She would impose strict quotas on male journalists and their impertinent interview techniques. Only leftish female journalists would be allowed to interview leftish female candidates asking only leftish female questions. Smelly overweight male journos would have to retrain as burger flippers on zero hours contracts at Wimpey, cooking ‘special offer - all you can eat lunches for £5.99’.
The young pretender Burnham combed his eyelashes in front of a mirror, turning his head from side to side, admiring his profile as he practiced his speech. He was considering yet another change of course. “I virulently reject, no... violently reject....no... I reject, absolutely reject, kind of reject, have serious doubts about...” he dropped his chin and exhaled. “Oh God, this is harder than I thought. How does it go? I believe, I think, I think therefore I believe, I am I think, I try, oh what the hell” he scanned his script again.
This conviction thing was much harder than he expected. It was easier when the Dark Lord Blair was their leader. He had the knack of looking sincere no matter what lies he was selling. Such was the admiration of the Tory establishment for that public school charmer with his brazen lies that little effort was required by middle ranking acolytes like Burnham in those happy days. Now the Dark Lord was exiled in disgrace and the brooding bean counter Brown was finished. The first had become last and the last was now, .... second last. It was time to step out of the shadows and take up the mantle. Now how did it go again, “I believe, .....oh hell”. He would just have to wing it as usual, all things to all men, aiming for a middle path between, well, whatever the alternatives might be. The focus groups were an infallible guide. Listen to the crowd, they will tell you the way. Follow the crowd and you will be their leader. The question was how could he put that across convincingly in front of a hall full of Jez supporters? Smile, flash those eyebrows and don’t forget to keep the fringe combed down in front. Look serious, working class, sort of. Details matter. Let the principles look after themselves. It seemed to work for Donald Trump.
The Lady Yvette, heiress to the estate of Blair and Brown, stared down with a steely eye on the sleeping form of her husband Ed, slumped over a nappy-changing table. He was catching a few minutes rest after a long night tending to the bawling children. The baby whose nappy he had changed a few minutes earlier was crawling around the kitchen floor while Ed, his head slumped onto the worktop, snored loudly. The noise reverberated around the house as the Lady Yvette swept into the room. She snatched the latest draft of her carefully scripted speech. “Ed, come on, snap out of it. I don’t have time for this” she barked.
“Wha...” Ed groaned as he struggled to pull himself together. “Who’s that...... Gordon?”
“I’m off now” the Lady Yvette said. She blew a kiss at her dishevelled husband as he stood up, shivering from the effects of sleep deprivation. He stared at the kitchen draining board piled high with dirty crockery and utensils. Children’s toys and clothes lay scattered around the floor. “Oh God, another day of this” he thought. “Surely there was more to life than childcare, sleepless nights and a relentlessly ambitious domineering ..... If only....”
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