The bullet in the Prime Minister’s brain

“If re-elected the government will cut taxes, and that’s a promise.”

 

“How will you pay for these tax cuts, Prime Minister?”

 

“By raising other taxes, and hoping people are too stupid to notice.”

 

xxx

 

The bullet passed straight through the Prime Minister’s brain. Amazingly he survived, and even more amazingly there was no noticeable damage done. It missed by a whisker the areas of the brain controlling speech, memory and the main motor functions.

 

After a month to recover from the shooting, and every conceivable physical and mental test, he was declared 100% fit and ready to resume his office.

 

However, it was only when he did his first interview that a serious mental defect was observed. He had lost his ability to lie. As he later described, he had planned to fudge the issue of how he would pay for tax cuts by vaguely talking about economic growth and knocking the opposition, but when he opened his mouth the truth came out.

 

Within minutes of the interview all of his rivals in the party had begun planning their challenge to his leadership. A Prime Minister who tells the truth – it was beyond belief, and with an election approaching. In the political press it was estimated that the PM would be gone within the week, with a stalking horse easily gaining enough support to trigger a leadership election.

 

The Prime Minister was hidden away, banned from all public speaking. He missed that week’s Prime Minister’s questions, citing exhaustion following the shooting, but the reality was that party officials had decided he should never be seen nor heard in public again.

 

Then something extraordinary happened. Two days later the Times published first opinion poll since the infamous interview. It showed the government had increased it’s share of the vote by 5%, and was just 2% behind the opposition, having been 7% behind just a week before. 

 

Although fearing the poll was a one-off, party officials decided to risk allowing the Prime Minister to do another interview. Again the unintended revelations were catastrophic. The interviewer, relishing the opportunity of an honest politician, asked the Prime Minister who was really to blame for the current economic crisis – the previous government or his own policies? His answer was unequivocal.  “Oh it’s nobody’s fault but our own, the chancellor’s completely screwed up. He’s a complete clown, if I had my way he would never have been in post, but he’s got friends in high places.”

 

Later in the interview he went on to ‘out’ his Foreign Secretary, whose addiction to casual sexual encounters was, he admitted, a major security risk.  

 

The Prime Minister was quickly put back in quarantine, with the ever-reliable Deputy PM furiously whizzed around the interview circuit denying the claims and putting out the official line.

 

But again a batch of opinion polls showed that the public approved of the honest approach. For the first time since they were elected, the government had a lead in the polls. The PM’s personal rating was plus 40%, having been negative for his entire political career. Only one other politician scored a positive figure and that was Winston Churchill, at a respectable plus 3%.

 

A key by-election approached. A marginal constituency which the government couldn’t afford to lose, with its parliamentary majority already slender. Party strategists decided to use the by-election to test whether high opinion poll ratings would result in votes, or if the public was just pretending to like the new honesty.

 

The PM spent a whole week campaigning in the constituency, recording dozens of interviews for local radio and TV. Every interviewer now had a list of difficult questions and every single one was rewarded with shocking revelations. Yes the Education Minister was a racist, yes the party had dropped it’s anti-smoking policy because a tobacco company gave a £2 million contract to the Health Minister’s PR firm, yes the Deputy Prime Minister was sleeping with his researcher and yes, he agreed, the Minister for Work was not up to the job.

 

Minister after minister resigned. The TV news and papers were filled 24/7 with revelation after revelation, the government’s four years in office were slowly being revealed as a crooked, incompetent, insane abuse of public funds, by a group of politicians and advisers who were nothing but corrupt, money-grabbing imbeciles. And yet the opinion poll ratings got better and better, the government won the by-election with a massively increased majority and the PM’s approval rating overtook that of God.

 

Even the party’s business backers were at the mercy of the PM’s rogue honesty. He revealed secret deals with the energy companies whereby they were given the go-ahead to double prices, in return for a few £ million in the party’s coffers. The public responded with a campaign against the energy companies, including a non-payment protest, that forced the companies to drop prices, causing one energy boss to lose 5% of his £50 million bonus.

 

But in spite of the public anger, the PM was never blamed for his part in the dodgy deals and his own popularity continued to rise. His honesty also led to a change in the way the country was governed. The new Chancellor and the new Minister for Work were forced to implement policies to boost the economy and create jobs, a complete reversal of previous policy, which in turn made the government even more popular. Within six month’s the government had an 8 per cent lead in the polls.

 

The approaching election looked a foregone conclusion. The opposition simply couldn’t find any angle to use against the PM, after all, no matter what they said about the government the PM could be guaranteed to say something a hundred times worse. Disastrously, the opposition leader tried to copy the strategy of honesty, but his first attempt at doing so led to the confession that he had rigged his own leadership election, leading to his immediate resignation, a bitter month of in-fighting and the election of a third-rate has-been, who had won the leadership by making implausible promises to the trade unions.

 

Within his own party, nobody dared challenge for the leadership, as the PM had revealed so much about the dirty, nasty, party he led that without his personal ‘honest John’ popularity the government was destined to come fourth or fifth. Every Cabinet colleague was exposed as either incompetent, dishonest, ideologically insane or, in most cases, all three, so there was no credible replacement.

 

In spite of his popularity and the certain electoral victory, many of his colleagues wanted him gone. No minister was safe, every skeleton in every closet stood to be revealed, and you don’t get to the position of Minister without having closets bulging with skeletons.

 

Likewise business leaders, senior civil servants, leaders of the police, military, secret service, all had something to hide and all feared that the PM’s out of control honesty would destroy their businesses or ruin their careers.

 

The second bullet passed through the Prime Minister’s brain a month before the election. A rogue assassin, who disappeared into the night.

 

Nobody was ever prosecuted for the murder. The list of suspects was too numerous: people who had lost their jobs seeking revenge, or people who feared they would lose their jobs the next time the PM opened his mouth.

 

The election went ahead with every party equally unpopular. There was no overall winner, and the four main parties formed a coalition government, pledging to undo any harm that had been done.