Introducing our new sponsor: The Sleazeometer!

 

From the makers of Priti-stick career glue, introducing Scavenger Bird of Satire’s new sponsor the patent-pending, Paterson-populated “Sleazeometer”!

Utilising research by the Grange Hill school of advanced political studies the Sleazeometer measures precisely the level of sleaze and corruption within the target political party. Technology provided by Dominic Cumming’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency include a single glazed glass screen and a pointy arrow.

The Sleazeometer has a unique grading system from ‘an honest mistake gov’ to ‘fantastically corrupt’. Simply feed your data in one end and await the result. 

Advanced testing results speak for themselves:

You have a government that has just forced its MPs to vote to tear up the scrutiny of ethical standards system just to protect one MP. The MP in question is best pals with the Chief Whip and the Leader of the House. The same MP is found to have lobbied Ministers for a company that was paying him. The Sleazeometer says… “Definitely Not the People’s Priorities!”

You initiate lockdown rules and then break them to sleep with your adviser who you have also given a taxpayer funded job to without declaring it. The Sleazeometer says… “That’s just not cricket (the Yorkshire kind or otherwise).”

A special VIP lane for non-competitive procurement gives multi-million pound contracts to a Minister’s favourite pub landlord and a broker who sells dog food. The Sleazeometer says… “these greasy palms have made a right dog’s dinner out of all of this”...

One of your MPs is found guilty of harassment including threatening to throw acid in someone’s face. Your party suspends the MP’s membership! The Sleazeometer says “Yeah, on balance suspension is probably the right course of action”...   …

So when Nigerian princes start calling the public asking if they want to donate to he Conservative Party, you know you need the Sleazeometer!

Available from any good sales broker, registered in a tax haven or married to a local councillor. Prices range from £49.99 to £49million.

Does this all sound very dodgy? Now you can be sure with the Sleazeometer!

Endorsements: 

“Sound’s great mate” 

The twitter account that asks if Professor John Curtice is on tv or not

“That’s lovely dear”

Mrs Scavenger Bird of Satire

“I would be happy to endorse this product to Ministers as soon as you’ve paid my invoice”

Mr O Paterson

Episode XXVIII: What if? Matt Hancock did go to Africa

Time, space, reality is more than a linear path. It's a prism of endless possibilities where a single choice can branch out into infinite omnishambles. I am The Writer, I cannot intervene (because no one pays attention to this blog) but I will be your guide on this Marvel/Matt Hancock pisstake as we ponder the question What If?....

Matt Hancock, the former UK ill-Health Secretary is appointed Special Envoy for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). In one universe Hancock's appointment, on the same day as a parliamentary report concluded that thousands had died because of government failings under his watch, was met with a wave of criticism. The UNECA withdraws his appointment within days. Hancock's diplomatic dreams disappear like quicksilver.

But in another universe a different reality unfolds. Behind the scenes an ambassador of the mysterious country of Wakanda is hard at work. The hawk-eyed diplomat is concerned that if one of the architects of the UK's appalling Covid response is given another position of responsibility involving a deadly pandemic the consequences for humanity would be catastrophic. The Ambassador convinces fellow African leaders of her bold vision to accept Hancock's new ‘special envoy’ role so he can roll around Africa insulting everyone with his incompetence but not actually being in charge of anything.

“How hard could economic promotion for the whole of Africa be?” thought Matt, “I can easily fit that around my British MP duties”. The media fallout from telling everyone to lockdown then breaking said lock down to have an affair hadn’t quite gone away and he arrived on the continent as popular as the collector for the British Museum. His first stop was an interview for a Nigerian tv talk show. Matt tried to break the ice with a little joke about Boris’s use of the term ‘bongo bongo land’ but bringing this all up again didn’t seem to be that popular. He almost choked when he found out that the show went out to 12 million people. He’d assumed it would just be 12.

The new Special Envoy’s trip to Nairobi didn’t go much better as he proceeded to mansplain text banking to a member of the Kenyan Chamber of Commerce. Hapless Hancock quickly found out from her that in fact text banking was used by most Kenyans and didn’t need explaining to anyone in the room. 

Matt of course could have done something useful like supporting African export promotion in various global trade hubs. Instead he went to build a school in a remote village. As he was laying the foundation stone he realised he'd never been on a gap year and promptly discovered himself. He wanted to help people. He wanted to help people just like this.

No, that was fucking bollocks. He wasn't helping. He could already see a professional construction crew moving in to correct his wonky foundation stone just as they did for the American teenagers who’d laid the same stone last week. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps he just needed to not do anything. No more media interviews, conferences or speeches and definitely no trying to help.

Matt Hancock even gave up trying to mediate in a disputed election. And it was walking away where he finally had his greatest triumph. The two sides had both tried to steal the election, both running under the slogan, "make Africa great again". Discussions to resolve the crisis led by Matt had gone nowhere. But as he gave his resignation press conference, ending his involvement in what he called the unsolvable situation, the two candidates met at the back of the room. It turned out that they both hated Hancock's smug attempts at diplomacy. A passing joke led to a half hour giggleathon and then a moment of bonding at their facilitator's expense. In fact the relationship blossomed and an agreement was met between the two sides. And it was all down to Hancock walking away. What a man. Only his incompetence could have achieved this. And just like Obama before the drone strikes, the EU before Mediterranean push backs and Abiy Ahmed before Tigray he earned the ultimate accolade of the deserving, the Nobel Peace Prize. 

It was enough to bring a (definitely not staged) tear to anyone’s eye.

Marvel fans can have a point for each Marvel character i've smuggled into the blog.

Episode XXVII: Reshuffling the Cabinet deck: what does a two of clubs get me?

The lights are dimmed, the Scotch is poured and the chips are down. It's time to reshuffle the Cabinet. The Prime Minister is the cigar smoking dealer. Less the professionalism of Caesars Palace more a waffling philanderer in a cheaper private member's club. So what hand has the country been dealt?

Well the bad news is the pack had very few aces in to begin with. The twos of clubs behave as if they are Kings and the Queen is staring at a Corgi wondering if it would make a better education secretary. 

Speculation before a reshuffle is always high. The Westminster rumour mill will kickstart into overdrive as soon as a commentator or a spad thinks it might be tactically smart. With more Tory manifesto pledges broken on tax rises and pensions non-increases, the threat of demotion or promotion is a good way to ensure loyalty. 

But no one really knows what is happening or when the croupier will play the first card, no matter what they claim. As for who gets dealt into the nation's hand, no one knows that either. With rumors, gossip and the PM's office privately briefing every journalist, the poker face isn't straight but home to so many eyebrow twitches, the hand is anyone's guess. 

If you do want a quick rundown of recent gossip. No one in government likes Defence Secretary Ben Wallace so he's definitely going. Except he seemed to handle the Afghan evac better than Foreign Sec, Raab so Wallace stays and Raab goes. To be replaced by Trade Sec Liz Truss, Priti Patel or Michael Gove. But Carrie doesn't like Gove so he stays as Cabinet Sec. Now that Ian Botham is a trade envoy, Emma Raducanu will become Housing Minister. Dominic Cummings will not return to government but a successfully engineered clone will. And I heard that Sharron got off with Brad at the club last night or somethink...

And then it happens. The first minister is called into Downing Street. They exit with a smile on their face. "Have you got a promotion minister?” The journalists outside yell. Then the news filters through on twitter, they've been sacked. Others are luckier, “come in, come in”, says the PM and his closest advisers, “listen we were really impressed with how you handled your ministerial brief/controversial vote/ twitter spat with Gary Linekar so how would you like to be Secretary of State of something more important?" "Wow m?”, thinks the Minister, " I might even wave at the cameras on the way out".

But what's this? Dominic Raab going back to Number Ten a second time? A secretary of state who says no to a firing? A card that refuses the discard pile? Who does he think he is? Angela Rayner? Raab reappears as Minister of Justice (deemed a demotion from Foreign Secretary) and Deputy Prime Minister, a title usually reserved for making Nick Clegg feel influential. This is all highly unusual. Maybe he knows where the bodies are buried? Not the ones left in Afghanistan by his incompetence, I meant like he knows how many kids the Prime Minister really has.

As for the rest of the hand: In the discard pile we find the 0.5 of Clubs, Gavin Williamson. Aside from his repeated exam paper palavas, Wiliamson recently confused meeting rugby-physiqued Mario Itoje with England football star and transfer hope for the leader of the opposition, Marcus Rashford. Perhaps Williamson could have taken a leaf out of David Cameron’s book and simply referred to meeting a black man in Plymouth, that went down much better with the commentating classes. Other ca(r)ds cast from the Cabinet hand include Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick. Himself definitely a spade given how many conflicts of interest with property developers he has. The Justice Secretary was shuffled out of the pack so Raab had somewhere to fall.

In the new hand there are a number of rising stars. Liz Truss moves to take over Raab’s role as Foreign Secretary. Her tenure as trade secretary has made her surprisingly popular within the Conservative party but understood by most of the public to be a meme given human form. 

Truss has also been a trailblazer for the ‘war on woke’, something of a theme in this Cabinet. Controversial Ministers like Priti Patel continue in their roles. Newbie Nadine Dorries is a gutsy play. Neither the Queen of hearts, nor Queen of the Jungle in her short constituent-abandoning stint on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Critics have been concerned by negative comments about same-sex mariage by her and anti-trans comments by new Equalities Minister, Kemi Badenoch. Meanwhile, loyal backstabber, Michael Gove moves to Housing Secretary just as a video from a speech he made in his twenties emerges involving racist language, homophobia and stereotypes for the North of England. No wonder the war on woke is so important to the Conservative Party, these Tory politicians have been punished by the metropolitan liberal consensus of political correctness and forced into promotions within Boris Johnson’s Cabinet! Poor bastards.

The war on woke is only one part of the government’s posturing. With its hand reshuffled the government now wants to present a confident vision of delivery ahead of elections in a few years time. This is not a government on holiday. This is not the retreat from Kabul. This is the government of the ‘people’s priorities’. With 60% of the cabinet privately educated, 40% Oxbridge educated, this is the government of Levelling Up! As the reshuffled Housing and Levelling Up Secretary said, “We are at last experiencing a new empire, an empire where the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner.”Gove, Dorries, Badenoch, lucky Britain, it’s been dealt three of a kind.

Episode XXVI: British Summer Travels, Kent or Kabul?

 

Like teachers, MPs get very upset if you tell them their 6 week summer break is a 'holiday'. It's for spending time in the constituency and thinking big policy thoughts. But we can imagine after a busy term of politicking what a ‘well earned break’ might look like:

Politico’s daily newsletter has spotted the likes of Emily Thornburry, Jonny Mercer and Wes Streeting beaching, camping and walking across the picturesque parts of Northumbria, Scotland and the Lake District. They can enjoy the strangely intense weather and then get caught in a long debate about climate change with someone who has recognised them in the pub or campsite toilets.

Dominic Cummings’ favourite means of holiday travel is an inter-reality drive equipped camper van allowing him to visit his favourite dark realms of misery: Mordor, Corroban, Hades and Slough. 

Sources close to Boris Johnson say his 2020 holiday to Scotland almost ended in him drowning. According to various newspapers, he appeared to be in distress during a sea swim and his close protection officers had to jump in and rescue him. Floundering and out of his depth, Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019.

Mark Francois was seen at Cambersands constructing a long series of pill boxes in the sand. Tommy helmet on he took up a defensive position and yelled ratatatatat to fire his imaginary machine gun at startled German tourists. Except because of Brexit and Covid they weren't German they were from Nottingham.

[Important public announcement: Mark Francois MP has long been an object of ridicule for this blog for basically acting like he's a member of the Home Guard transported to the 21st century. But this satirical Crow would like to take a moment to appreciate his genuine attempts to hold the government and manufacturers to account on the shocking defence procurement of an armoured vehicle that vibrates so badly it's injuring the troops inside. Ok done normal service may now resume].

So what activities can you do on your UK holiday? Take a metal detector and search for buried treasure? A roman coin, a saxon dagger or a chest load of bad news buried by the government on the last day of parliamentary recess? There’s the scathing report about accommodation for asylum seekers; plans for compensation for Postmasters wrongly convicted of theft and fraud after an IT cock-up and; pay cuts for teachers and police to name a few. Amateur archaeologists may also be needed to sift through the sheer number of skeletons in this government’s closet as another one in the shape of Conservative funding for Boris Johnson’s flat refurb was also revealed.

For his holiday, Dominic Raab has always wanted to go to France but has never realised just quite how close Calais is. He has been warned off a sailing holiday back from Normandy after Priti Patel was seen patrolling the channel with a real machine gun. She is determined that, no matter how desperate their situation, no-one will be able to enter the UK via Kent. Only migrants from Covid-19 hotspots that the government wants a trade deal with will be allowed into the country and they must fly via Heathrow.

Instead Raab was on holiday in Crete. He was trying to enjoy his nice pleasant break when it was quite rudely interrupted by the Taliban taking Kabul. Raab really would have liked to have responded sooner but he was taking in the ancient ruins of Crete and found himself lost in the Labyrinth with no string and no signal. As the Mail reports, he did deputise Lord Goldsmith to call the falling Afghan government. Maybe it was Raab’s geographic prowess that led him to determine that the Minister for the Pacific was the best choice for handling a crisis in a landlocked country in Asia.

Meanwhile, the government is struggling to make its leviathan immigration controls work to help Afghan interpreters who supported UK troops over the last twenty years. This is not a surprise to those who fear that the Home Office is one racist reform away from deporting the fake tanned hordes of Essex for looking ‘too foreign’. Many MPs, particularly military veterans, are fighting the corner of the interpreters trying to evacuate via Kabul airport. Many other Afghans including democrats, women's rights champions and various minorities will be granted a visa but will still have to find a way out of Afghanistan themselves.

As crowds of desperate Afghans congregate in Kabul, crowds of analysts are flocking to the airwaves. Flows of graveyard of empire metaphors have made a sad comeback. First it was just a few tweets about the Soviet Union's failed campaign to a few dozen  followers. Then it started to reach PHD supervisors as essays on the British withdrawal from Kabul in 1842 were dusted off. Commentators are now concerned that it is only a matter of time before the resurgence moves on from newspaper cartoons of imperial helmets left on historic battlefields to memes of forlorn looking lions, bears and eagles. In the dark corridors of international policy making, some even believe it is too late and the question of "what China's flawed intervention will look like?" has already been asked. Holidays for MPs are fine but will someone please buy a one way ticket for the metaphors!

Episode XXV: 'I Have a Cunning Plan', It's Planning Reform

 

Yes, reforming the rules around planning permission for new houses. Exciting stuff! Will there be sex? action? stunts? No. But butter-me-popcorn we do have a bi-election upset in the home counties and some sordid conflicts of interest. There are many ways to try and make rather dry political comings and goings attract the interest that their significant impact deserves. This blog normally throws around witticism and amateur photo-shopping to do the job. Planning reform, however, is so tinder-dry (the firelighter not the hook up app) that only a complete Hollywood makeover will suffice. So hold onto your Cokes (before Ronaldo moves them) and brace yourself for action, explosions and drama(-based metaphors). Here comes planning reviews in an epic trilogy of mammoth proportions.

Planning Reform: A forgotten dawn

A long time ago in a government far, far away…

PLANNING REFORM

The Galactic Chancellor, George Osborne (remember him? Sickly looking chap, allergic to sunlight, garlic and adequately resourced libraries), has angered local star systems with his bold reforms to speed up house building. His proposals included a zonal system giving almost automatic planning permission for brownfield sites and greater powers for councils to use derelict land. But an alliance of environmentalists, localists and leafy shire Torys, known as the Nimbys are in open rebellion against the Chancellor. Will the Chancellor prevail? Will the Nimbys defeat his death stare? Will a small band of housing charities led by Darth Revan (let’s see if we have any real star wars nerds?) succeed in ensuring that more housing is built but it is affordable and decent quality?.... 

PR 2: Safe as Houses

The politician and the ex-porn baron plot to sneak a development through on the sly. Yes! This is what we are after. Scandal! Excitement! Directed by Guy Ritchie. Featuring The Bank Job’s Daniel Mays as Robert ‘quick nod’ Jenrick and Lock Stock’s Nick Moran as Daily Express owner, Richard ‘Dirty’ Desmond. From the glitzy ballroom of a party fundraiser, Quick Nod and Dirty Desmond shake hands on a dodgy deal to get Dirty’s £1billion Isle of Dogs property development past the local authorities. ‘Nah problem’ says Quick Nod Jenrick. ‘I know just the planning minister to nod that through… he’s me!’ More champagne to follow and less affordable housing requirements to follow that. All we need now is some soft jazz in the background and a little donation to the Conservative Party. Now that’s Safe as Houses. 

Planning Reform 3: Bird of Liberty Rising!

War among the privet! The expeditionary property developers have launched an offensive against re-mobilised bands of environmentalists, local democrats and the curtain twitching middle classes of the southern shires. They fight apartment renovation by apartment renovation, retail complex by retail complex. As the battle heats up, the zone-based planning reforms trundle over the grim horizon. Locally accountable, case-by-case decisions are right in their path, destined to be crushed. More powerful than ever, the zone system war machine is set to roll across the green fields of England. If the government gets their way, all land will be declared ‘protected’, ‘for renewal’ or ‘for growth’. Or as they describe it in the trenches, ‘don’t upset Carrie’, ‘Tory target at the next election’ and ‘kerching!’

But all is not lost for the plan’s opponents. Lieutenant Ed Davy, their unlikely hero of the hour, has a cunning plan. Lib Dems and even Labour and the Greens think they have spied a weakness in the ‘blue wall’ or more accurately the ‘blue hedge’ of eternally voting Tory villages, market towns and leafy suburbs. The light cavalry of the Lib Dems have won in Chesham and Amersham!  Yes they lost the 2016 Battle of Brussels. But now, all along the front, cracks are appearing in their enemies’ defences: discontent over these planning reforms, British beef-undercutting trade deals with Australia and maybe even HS2. Operation Bird of Liberty is a go. 

Forward the Lib Dem armoured division’s  ride-on lawn mower! 

Forward through the Conservative heartlands! 

FORWARD TO VICTORY!!!!......?

Starring: Scavenger Bird of Satire

Directed by: Scavenger Bird of Satire

Casting: Scavenger Bird of Location

Make up and feathers: Scavenger Bird of Satire

Film Caw: Scavenger Bird of Satire

…..

Post credits scene:

Dominic Cummings…. Cackling…. Dressed as Loki!

ENDS

Corvid Sketch Episode XXIV: et tu Dom? Or How to Stab a Politician in the Back

It was probably inevitable in this dark pantomime written by Armando Iannucci and Max Brooks that at some point Dominic Cummings would seek to stab Boris Johnson in the back. From Vote Leave conquests to the Emperor’s palace they have been the ultimate political force in recent years. Now they are the best of enemies. Dom is rumoured to have become disillusioned when he found out that he, Dominic Cummings, wasn’t the Prime Minister. It’s Carrie instead. Now, six months after being fired, Dom has slithered from the shadows to have his revenge. 

So how do you stab a politician in the back?

Timing is  important. Enough time passed that your own incompetence and dishonesty isn’t still in the headlines but not so far gone that people have forgotten who you are.

The setting of the House of Commons and the classic costume of a cloak of malice and open buttoned shirt combo helps.

A proper Tory betrayal needs a sharp blade. Being a dark lord of the Sith, Dom uses a double bladed red lightsaber: known as the joint hearing of the health and social care and science and technology committees.

Boris himself is quite a difficult person to actually take down via a knife to the gap where the spine normally is. His political skin is made from vibranium and thus is impervious to claims of racism, infidelity and dishonesty. Michael Gove famously stabbed him in the back in the 2017 leadership election. But presumably after repeating some homophobic remark about ‘bum boys’, Boris shrugged it off and returned to the leadership contest in 2019. Given that Cummings once worked for Gove you’d have thought Boris would have seen this round coming?

Given Boris’s survivability, which angle did Cummings thrust from? The first stab came from the direction of incompetence, Is Boris a fit and proper person to lead the count? “No”. He changes his mind “ten times a day”, “like a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”. Then there was the cut of Boris’s indifference to others, Cummings heard Johnson say he would rather see “bodies pile high” than impose a third lockdown. And finally a bitter slash in the description of the outcome, “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die”. 

Boris wasn’t Cumming’s only target for revenge. Health Secretary Hancock was singled out as someone Cumming urged Johnson to fire. Meanwhile Carrie Symonds’s dog was accused of dominating the PM’s agenda and working to ensure that Carrie’s friends got key positions in government. This is not too surprising, Jack Russells are known to be a cronyistic breed.

Of course this whole scene might have been more successful for Cummings if he hadn’t shot his integrity repeatedly in the foot throughout his whole career. Despite delivering his testimony to the Committee in a way that excited the papers it’s hard to know whether he was simply making an argument designed to pull the heart strings of those who hate Boris rather than one that should be believed. #ClassicDom. A true case of argumentum ad captandum. #Classics Dom.

Of course in general the Conservatives prefer to dispatch their internal rivals by stabbing them in the back, there is more time for plotting over brandy and cigars and more excuses for quoting Latin. The Green Party does nothing of the sort, instead prompting a moment of collective self reflection in order to compost old leaders and allow the flourishing of new shoots.

Labour prefer the good old-fashioned show trial and firing squad. Jeremy Corbyn is perhaps the most recent target of this. After being sent into exile, party apparatchiks are now busy deleting his name from party histories and removing his image from any photos. Not only is he not leader of the Labour party, he never was. This has left behind a curious spectacle of photos of current leader Keir Starmer shaking hands with thin air, a striking metaphor for the party's chances of winning back the red wall. This sort of coup doesn't always go well. There is always the risk that General Zhukov will storm in, yell “Hands up or i’ll shoot you in the fookin’ face” in a Northern accent and mess everything up. In supreme leader Starmer’s most recent purge attempt, Zhukov was played by Angela Rayner MP. During the unsuccessful attempt to get rid of her as deputy leader it is believed Rayner headbutted Starmer in the face and emerged with a promotion. Her full list  of titles now reads Angela Rayner MP, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Retaker of the North, Super Mum, Mother of Dragons, McDonnell's revenge.... Future leader of the Labour Party?

Corvid Sketch Episode XXIII: Decor without the Decorum

 

The renovations to No. 11 Downing Street have got to be the most controversial in politicaldom since the days of MP expenses claims for duck islands and moat cleaning. Overseen by Prime Minister Carrie Symonds and her fiancé Boris Johnson, the works are believed to have cost up to £200,000. While big questions remain about who has payed for them, the Scavenger Bird of Satire has flown through an open window to report back on exactly what has been bought for this premier political pad. 

Theresa May’s John Lewis furniture was branded a ‘nightmare’ and has been thrown out. Units from Ikea have been rejected as not Brexit-y enough while Argos has been ignored because it’s toasters and kettles don’t come with gold leaf.

Lush carpets, sofas and portraits are sourced with help from a luxury designer who sells fabric at £100 a meter. There is gold everywhere. What else for the eton-educated every-man resident while he carries out the ‘peoples’ priorities’.  In the kitchen, there is a special box of silver spoons for Carrie and Boris’ child when it is born.

In line with PM Carrie’s environmental concerns there is no fur and everything comes from a sustainable source: Tory donor Lord Brownlow’s bank account.

And of course there are the statues: suffragette founder Emmeline Pankhurst, 18th century slave and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano and former athlete now Peer, Tanni Grey-Thompson. No, i’m kidding, they are all Churchill. Winston Churchill is f*cking everywhere. A bust of Churchill in every room. Glaring down on the master bed, staring you in the eyes as you sit on the downstairs toilet. Boris wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Down a red carpeted corridor there’s private office with a desk, phone and littleblack book: all for keeping Boris’s affairs in order.

There’s also a special VIP room for friends and family who would like multi-million pound government contracts for PPE supplies or COVID tests. As the Scavenger Bird of Satire flew past a number of eminently qualified business people were waiting for their contracts and enjoying a complimentary taxpayer funded foot massage. They included Matt Hancock’s favourite pub landlord, a pet shop owner, a celebrity coke dealer, one of the Cheeky Girls and a Dalek.  

It hasn’t all been glitzy new furniture and gold. There have been a number of structural issues which needed addressing. Carrie Symonds wanted the John Lewis furniture out and the hundreds of thousands spent in order to make somewhere that felt Prime Ministerial: wallpapering over the cracks in Boris’s credibility. There was also a large plumbing bill. Upon cracking open the pipes it was revealed that text messages, whatsapps and emails have been leaking out of Number 10 Downing Street for some time. Soundproofing was needed lest someone take the Prime Minister out of context for the thousandth time.

Much of the money has been spent on trying to get rid of a shadowy stain left by former adviser and Dr Evil’s ‘Older Me’, Dominic Cummings. It is believed that weapons grade bleach, a crack team of Polish plasterers and an exorcist have all failed to dislodge the grotesque mark. What is left is a dark void in a corner where integrity and common decency should be. Not that there was much of that kicking around the flat to begin with.