It seems there is no depth to which the current crop of Conservatives will not sink, monetising every aspect of modern life in an attempt to create backdoor pathways to funnel any available wealth into their own pockets and those of their donors and cronies, the rivers and seas fouled with excrement, the bodies piled high on gurneys. Brexit Britain resembles nothing more than Russia in the dying days of the Soviet Union, with politicians and their friends in business trying to make off with as much money as they can before the edifice crumbles behind them. But even after the unravelling financial scandals that have enriched everyone from Michelle Mone to Matt Handcock’s pub landlord, the Tories have surely reached a new low with the revelation of plans to asset-strip the very concept of Christmas itself. And, as an investigation by the Guardian revealed, they are nothing new.
Unable to sleep on Christmas Eve 1983, after eating an entire and excessively rich duck confit at one sitting, the disarrayed chancellor of the exchequer, Nigel Lawson, was exiting the toilet in his vast Gascony mansion when he encountered what he assumed was one of his servants in a Father Christmas costume in a tapestried hall. The chancellor simply pantomimed the act of holding his nose and declared: “I’d leave that one a while if I were you.” Then Lawson realised – he was addressing the actual Father Christmas.
Having persuaded the startled gift-deliverer to join him for a swift sherry despite his noxious emission, Lawson gleaned that Christmas’s operation was profit-free and run entirely for the benefit of the world’s children. After the festive being departed on his magical sleigh, Lawson, a man physically incapable of experiencing wonder, quickly called the not unsurprisingly irritated foreign secretary, Geoffrey Howe. Howe had fallen asleep on the sofa while watching a 1977 made-for-TV drama on BBC Two, featuring Edward Asner as an ill-tempered executive who deserts his family, because it was 1983 and the other two channels had closed down at midnight.
On their return to Westminster in the new year, earlier than expected at Lawson’s behest, Howe’s team realised that an exploitable legal loophole meant Britain still had rights over business operations in the northernmost section of the British Arctic Territories, precisely where Santa’s Elf Workshop was located, even though the nation had formally relinquished the lands in 1880. In February, in a secret meeting at the Garrick Club, Howe and Lawson calculated that the Arctic loophole meant Britain could stake a claim to monies from Father Christmas himself! Plans were drawn up enabling Britain to demand a percentage of the value of each toy Christmas delivered, even though his outfit itself was run at cost and not for profit, and the findings were given to Margaret Thatcher for her perusal.
As the frequent vandalism of her statue in Grantham shows, Thatcher’s legacy is not regarded with the reverence Tory myth-makers would have us believe it is. But if the extent to which Thatcher stayed the death knell of the concept of Christmas as we know it were understood, I think even the most brutalised ex-Nottinghamshire miner might raise a festive pint of bitter to her memory. In less than an hour after receiving Howe and Lawson’s dossier, Thatcher sent them an urgent fax, written in her own spidery hand. “We may be Conservatives, gentlemen, but we are not monsters. Cease and desist and pray no one ever hears of this plan!” The pair’s findings were mothballed and forgotten until, in 2019, Sajid Javid’s new chief secretary to the Treasury, a little known former hedge fund manager called Rishi Sunak, stumbled across them in a rarely visited cupboard where ethics were kept and stashed them away for a rainy day.
When Sunak came to power in October, Operation Elf Fuck, as the plan became known among disgruntled civil servants, was thrown into action, ideally in time to milk as much money out of Santa’s Christmas 2022 activities as possible. Currently, there are more than 526,000,000 Christians under the age of 14 worldwide. Assuming each has one main “Santa” present, in addition to gifts delivered by Santa but ostensibly from parents and relatives, and assuming the Sunak government were to take a “facilitation fee” of £2 on each gift, Sunak calculated that the Conservatives, and their cronies and donors, would be able to rake in £1,052,000,000, or £1bn and 52m a year, from Santa’s previously profit-free activities, in exchange for doing absolutely nothing as usual. But at what price?
In order to meet the Tories’ demands it is necessary for Father Christmas to cut costs, but he has no income coming in to mitigate against this. Elves are required to work longer hours and using machinery that is not so regularly maintained. In November, 17 elves died after becoming crushed in the cogs of a machine turning out the popular Barbie Cutie Reveal Doll ™ ®; denied their usual food of costly candy floss, many are turning to food banks, or putting sugar on dental floss, which they suck on and then reuse. The normal reindeer team has been cut from eight to six, resulting in slower delivery times, and the distressing sight of Rudolph and Dancer being dispatched with a bolt gun on the factory floor. Many long-serving elves walked that day, vowing never to return.
As a complex web of shell companies funnels the purloined Christmas money into various defensive offshore accounts, the Christmas operation is on its knees. “This isn’t why we got into elfing,” said one elf, in a high breathy voice that sounded like Nick Ferrari wheezing into a kazoo. “We wanted to make children happy, not to generate wealth for fat cats we’ve never seen. People like Rishi Sunak don’t know one end of a Magic Mixies Mixlings’ Magic Castle Playset ™ ® from another.”
Stewart Lee’s standup shows Snowflake and Tornado are both currently available on the BBC iPlayer. Basic Lee tour dates are booking now
