There was a deep despair hanging over No 10. A slough of despond. Staff tiptoed from room to room, anxious not to create a disturbance or catch one another’s eyes. Few words were spoken and then only in whispers.
“Where’s Rishi?” asked Isaac Levido.
“He’s locked in his study,” replied James Forsyth. “He won’t come out. He’s been sobbing for hours. All he can do to distract himself from his PMQs disaster is to watch his new two-and-a-half-minute flipchart party political broadcast on repeat.”
Levido: “Hmm. That bad. Well, let’s just hope he doesn’t notice that he made three spelling mistakes. The halfwit can’t even get ‘furlough’, ‘priorities’ and ‘mortgage’ right … ”
Forsyth: “I’m sure no one will notice. And it’s not as bad as Jezza. He can’t count. My main worry is he will realise he forgot to list ‘Brexit’, ‘Liz Truss’ and ‘14 years of Tory fuck-ups’ in the list of reasons why the economy was tanking.”
But this was all comparatively minor stuff under the circumstances. They could live with yet another video clip that made them look as if they didn’t know what they were doing. The Tory Top Team were more worried about getting through the next 24 hours without looking as if they were insulting the parents of a murdered child.
Levido took Forsyth to one side. “We need a plan. Urgently,” he said. So far nothing had worked. They had tried Kemi Badenoch. She had merely started yet another culture war, claiming it had been Keir Starmer’s fault that Sunak had made a joke about trans issues while Brianna Ghey’s mother had been in parliament. It had been Labour who had politicised the parents’ grief. It was just that the parents were too dumb to realise this.
Then they had sent out Jeremy Hunt. He had merely insisted nothing was true and that none of this had ever happened. Jezza is finding reality increasingly hard to bear. For a last hurrah, the terminally dim Laura Trott had tried to convince herself that Rishi hadn’t been making a joke. Which made you wonder why he, Victoria Atkins and dozens of Tory MPs had been laughing hysterically. Perhaps they were all just having a collective breakdown.
“We’ll need a useful idiot for the morning media round,” said Levido. “Someone too stupid to realise he’s been set up. Someone completely expendable. Someone we can rely on to say the unsayable.” Isaac and James looked at each other and spontaneously shouted in unison. “Send for Chris Philp.” Provided they could extract his nose from someone’s arse in time, he would be ideal.
So shortly after 7am, Philp appeared on BBC Breakfast. The presenter, Naga Munchetty, was unimpressed. Six times she asked whether the minister felt that Sunak’s joke had been appropriate and respectful and six times Philp had just shrugged and avoided giving an answer. He really wasn’t that bothered. Hell, it wasn’t his child who had been murdered, so just relax. Maybe Brianna’s parents should learn to take a joke.
You could sense the disbelief in Munchetty. Regardless of the rights and the wrongs of the trans debates, how about some sensitivity and decency? Brianna’s father had said he found the prime minister’s comments dehumanising and had asked for an apology. Was Philp saying that Peter Spooner was wrong?
Well … yes, that’s precisely what he was saying, come to think of it. Maybe Brianna’s parents were a bit thick and had missed the point. They needed to chill out and listen a bit more carefully before they rushed to take offence. Because he, Chris, the Mighty Philpster, had gone back to listen to what Sunak had said. And what he had heard was an outpouring of tenderness from Rishi and vile, transphobic hate from Keir Starmer. So maybe everyone should shut up a bit and listen to the Philp remix.
There would be no apologies. No nothing. This was a battle the Tory right were prepared to fight to the death. Sure it would have been better if Esther Ghey had not been there, but there was a principle at stake. Which was that it’s fine to make trans gags in parliament.
A short while later, a red-eyed Rishi sneaked into the Downing Street kitchen. Levido was there waiting for him. “Cheer up,” he said. “I’ve got a fun day planned for you. We’re going to forget your inability to read the room and depart from a script when required. You’re going to go for a nice, pointless ride in your favourite helicopter to Cornwall. You’ll like that. And here you’re just going to double down and say it’s Brianna’s parents who ought to be apologising for having misunderstood you. Where’s their gratitude? In any case, it’s not as if we’re going to win the election so it will make no difference. So might as well be true to our Inner Bastard.”
It wasn’t just the Tories who were thinking about the election. Over at Labour HQ, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were deep in conversation over the fate of their £28bn a year green commitment. “Maybe it would be best if we didn’t have any plans at all,” said Starmer. “That way, the Tories can never accuse us of making unfunded spending promises.”
“Look,” replied Reeves. Talking extra slowly because she knew Keir had difficulty with large numbers. “All I’ve said is that the economic climate has changed since we came up with the plan two years ago. Interest rates have rocketed and the Tories have spunked all the money on tax cuts. So we don’t have to abandon the whole policy. Just say we will do as much of it as we can under the fiscal rules.”
This sounded far too sensible to Starmer. He had always been secretly more impressed by Jezza, who couldn’t operate a pocket calculator, than his own shadow chancellor who had worked at the Bank of England. “The Tories keep saying we flip-flop,” he squeaked, the panic evident in his voice. “So maybe the best thing we can do is to flip-flop. At least that shows we’re being consistent.”
What people wanted was nothing in which to believe. After 14 years of big ideas from the Tories, they wanted really small ones from a Labour government. Ones that really wouldn’t make a difference. Quantum policies. Ones that could be both there and not there.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” said Starmer. “I’m going to summon the press to a secret Q&A where no cameras are allowed. Because if it’s not filmed, no one can say for certain if it ever happened. And then I’m going to cancel the £28bn.”
“But we’ve already cancelled it several times before,” observed Reeves drily.
“That’s the beauty of it. We’ll say it’s been cancelled but no one can be really sure. So we could always bring it back next week if we feel like it. Brilliant, isn’t it?”
This was shaping up into the election no one wanted to win.
