I wake up early, every single morning. Since I was a boy, born into a hard working, working class family, I’ve believed that hard work is the key to success and I can tell you this for nothing: you’re not going to get anything done if you sleep in all day. I don’t usually need an alarm but I set one anyway; it used to be a tone called ‘Insistent Drone’, but I changed it last week to ‘Dull, Monotonous Hum’ – it was so exciting waking up the next morning knowing that through this simple act I had made a real and lasting change for the better. I like to lay in bed for a few minutes. I try to engage in conversation with my wife but she always seems to sink into a deep sleep the moment I wake up so I often don’t get the share my thoughts about the future and the importance my hard working, humble background has had on my slow rise to the top of Great Britain’s political ladder. It’s a pity, because I get a real feeling that people find the things I want to talk about truly interesting and inspirational but they just don’t say so out of politeness.
I tend to eat breakfast on the go, you just can’t sit still when you’ve been voted in to save a country from the brink of complete moral and financial collapse. I try to live a little on the edge when it comes to choices, so one day it could be a bowl of muesli and some dried fruit and another day I might go crazy and have a slice of rye bread, half an avocado and a glass of almond milk. I know I might come across as being a serious minded politician from a hard working, humble background but at home I’m quite the opposite and sometimes I might ponder over my tie collection (I have 9!) for ten or twelve minutes before deciding which one to wear. I often want to run my safe choice of tie, matched with a grey suit and black shoes, past my wife, but she tends to sleep in a bit later and only gets up just before I’m about to leave the house. Moving into Number 10 Downing Street was a real reality check for us. I already miss our cosy family home in Kentish Town which, as you would expect, is a very modest, working class style house – it still has an outside toilet (as part of the gym and recreation centre I had built at the bottom of our garden) in case all four of the inside toilets are being used. It’s usually ok because all six of the the bedrooms are en suite as well.
Once I’m out and about there isn’t a moment to lose. The general public voted for me because they didn’t have any other rational options and because they wanted to see real change, instigated by a man who knows what it’s like to grown up part of a working class family in Surrey, where making ends meet every day was always tough. Now I’m in office I realise that everything wrong with this country is down to the Tories and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to blame them directly for anything that goes wrong for at least another three years. Looking ahead I can see that we’re going to have to make some tough decisions as a country, and if the country can’t make them because they’re not in charge then I’ll just have to stand up and make them myself, safe in the knowledge that I’m a humble man from a hard working background and I can simply blame Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss if anything else goes wrong. As I’ve always said: a tough decision is a tough decision and deciding on what tough decision to make and how tough to make it is certainly not for the faint-hearted. At university I was famed for arguing about anything with anyone, as long as I felt I was in the right. Very often my friend and colleagues will admit defeat early on and back away, and I’m still known as a man who can empty a room in minutes if I’ve got a proper cob on about trade embargoes, housing quotas or social justice for the LGBTQ or illegal migrant communities. It’s usually my wife who will leave a room first, often only seconds after I enter it – she knows me better than anyone and we sometimes joke that we communicate so little we may as well not have got married. If we find a stolen moment I like to have sex on top of her with the lights out, but with my new job and her baffling web of extra commitments there doesn’t seem to be much time for fun and games anymore. Being Prime Minister is even more boring than it looks.
I like to preach what I practice and I believe that if we’re going to lift this country out of the mess that has been left behind by Boris Johnson, Margaret Thatcher and Ted Heath then we should all try to lead a life based on the principles of a hard working, working class, Surrey raised, Kentish Town based sort of guy; it’s why I connect so firmly with so many desolate, stripped bare northern mining towns. So, after a lunch on the go (it could be as simple as cress and cottage cheese in a granary bap but if I feel I want all eyes on me I might go nuts and order a tuna and sweetcorn baguette instead) I’m never happier than sitting round a table, making tough decisions and bashing out the next new policy based on tough, knee-jerk, holier-than-though sentiments and a burning desire to completely avoid the bigger picture. For instance, I know that my decision to cut winter fuel allowances for pensioners might lead to hardship, misery and an earlier death for many, but people will just have to accept that I’m only trying to mend the cracks in British society that we wouldn’t have had to worry about if successive Tory governments under Churchill, Eden, MacMillan and Alec Douglas Home had been half competent. As I often tell my kids when we’re looking around a church on holiday or discussing the new social justice bill, the toughest decisions are often the most unpopular, but I was voted in on a mandate for real change and if real change means not being able to wake up grandma because she’s been frozen solid since last Thursday then that’s the way it’s got to be.
Things are definitely going to have to get worse before they get better. They don’t necessarily need to, but I’ve already decided that I want to be remembered as a man who stood up to his working class principles and who, when the going got tough got tough right back at it. I could have gone for the easiest routes to lasting, democratic change. I could be tackling poverty, migration, a stagnant economy and an infrastructure that is on its knees, begging for mercy, but instead I’m digging the knife in where it really hurts. As an example, by adding VAT onto private school fees I’ll be making a real change by flooding the state sector with children it cannot possibly accommodate as well as making staff redundant as schools that have been around for centuries struggle to keep their doors open. I made that choice, (despite having benefitted from a mixture of grammar and private education, thereby making me, as they would have said in ancient Greece, a hypocritical twat) in the run up to the election not because it was a cheap gimmick that would would win hundreds of thousands of left wing, cloth-cap, trade-union-suckling votes but because I truly believe that in the long run it will make almost no difference to anything because it makes almost no sense at all on any practical level whatsoever. As I said to Angela Raynor only the other day, as she was spanking my pasty white bottom with a studded sex paddle: if you’re going to make a decision, make it a tough one.
When I was head of public prosecutions I was seen as a breath of fresh air; a real tough guy, ready to make real tough decisions – a bit like Clint Eastwood in Magnum Force, or former Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger. I also know that to stay tough you need to be healthy. I can’t stand to eat meat, but I do like a bit of fish five or six times a week. Causing suffering to animals makes me want to weep but I’m fairly sure fish can’t feel pain, otherwise they would makes angry noises like all the other animals. I drink in moderation and I’m certainly not a smoker, and that’s why I’ve decided I simply can’t trust smokers to make the tough decision necessary to stop smoking and am simply going to do it for them by forcing them to chain smoke at home instead. Rather than being left to enjoy a cigarette in open air spaces I’ve decided to save the NHS. It matters not one bit that obesity, drug addiction, alcohol misuse, domestic abuse and chronic hypochondria use up far more NHS time and resources. It is also important to pan away from the fact that we are desperately trying to get everyone to live as long as possible because it’s “the right thing to do”. I truly believe that if we can successfully sweep all the big, actual problems facing the NHS under the carpet for as long as possible then small, pointless issues which effectively end personal freedom and choice are more than enough to keep voters happy until the next election. Besides, nobody appreciates more than I do that the reason we still have a smoking problem in Britain is due to a string of catastrophic policy failures that date back to the dark days of the Stanley Baldwin, Bonar Law and Marquess of Salisbury administrations.
The rest of the day is usually spent meeting with my cabinet or in the hot seat for a series of press interviews, during which I try to make as many interviewers (and those watching at home) fall asleep as quickly as possible. I know that some people find me relentlessly, almost obscenely dull, often before I’ve even opened my mouth to speak, but if they can’t understand that what this country needs is a tough talking, honest to goodness, working-class-but-not-really-working-class-at-all, political version of Chuck Norris then more fool them. I didn’t get where I am today by being charismatic and saying things that interest people. Oh no, I got where I am because I just happened to be leader of the Labour Party at the very moment when most people decided they just couldn’t be bothered to vote Tory anymore. If I had been leader of the Green Party or the Liberal Democrats or the EDL then none of those parties would have stood a chance. But that’s just luck, the same sort of luck that means I can now fly around the world boring the arse off as many fellow political leaders as possible with my short-sighted, petty plans to enact a manifesto for change and the tough decisions needed to mend a broken Britain. And that’s what I’ll be saying tomorrow, and the day after that, and every other day until I finally take over from Clive Myrie as this great nation’s most irritating, infinitely punch-able human being.
I get back home late most days (except on a Friday) to enjoy some time with my family, though my wife has often been so busy that she usually falls fast asleep as soon as she hears my footsteps on the stairs. Dinner will be something exciting like a baked potato with vegan cheese and steamed cauliflower and I may even treat myself to a bottle of cold beer or a small glass of wine, provided I’m absolutely sure there won’t be any more tough or unpopular decisions to make that day. I like to watch some TV before I go to bed – I’ve got a pretty broad taste in entertainment so it might be an old episode of Dad’s Army, a few minutes of whatever gardening shit Monty Don is turning up in these days or anything with Fiona Bruce. Before I get ready for bed I phone Angela Raynor to make sure it’s ok for me to get ready for bed and then I, er, get ready for bed. I often try to wake my wife, just for a bit of company and a chat, but she’s out for the count – honestly, she could, and often does, fall asleep standing up in the kitchen while I talk about inflation rate changes, my humble, working class background and the latest tough decision I’ve had to make to mend our broken Britain. As for the kids, well they have their own lives, but it’s handy to drag them out of their rooms once in a while, if only to prove to friends and colleagues that I’ve had sex with a woman at least twice. You would think that having such a stressful job would keep me awake at night but I find that a few seconds of listening to myself easily does the trick. Sometimes I have crazy dreams where I’m counting grains of rice and then I lose count and have to start all over again or I’m painting the shed and can’t decide what shade of dark brown to go for. Now that really would be a tough decision!
Sir Keir Starmer.
(as channelled through G B Burton. 08.09.2024)
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 