Paddy Bostock - Chosen

There were counter protestations from the accused, of course there were, the most frequent being “the sex was always consensual,” and “for crissakes, this kinda stuff’s being going on since ancient Athens and even before that, so what the fuck ?” Which gave rise to a barrage of pro-and anti-tweets and posts from across the whole Twitter zone, even one from the madman in The White House once he’d recovered from being hit over the head with a lead pipe after attempting to start World War Three. “Pussy’s ther for the grabbin’,” read his tweet.

And these were just the sex stories. Within a week of their unveiling came news of offshore investment paradises in which it was claimed the queen and the whole of her otiose family, never mind the nation’s other superstars, had for years been squirrelling away trillions and never paid a penny in tax to the Treasury. DAYLIGHT ROBBERY screeched The Daily Snitch , for example, above an editorial asking what the government intended to do about it.

Anyway, any way, what, you will be wondering, did all of this have to do with Jeremy Crawford?

Answer: 10 Downing Street was getting its collective knickers into so much of a twist it needed to divert public attention soonest from its litany of woes with a spanking new story of the PM’s unequivocal success at something or another, any thing would suffice. Quite apart from the—justifiable—fears of being branded sex pests or tax dodgers themselves, cabinet ministers were experiencing failures in more or less every avenue of their responsibilities caused largely by a pig-headed refusal to ditch their austerity mantra. On and on the budget slashes went, including those of MI5 and MI6 as noted by Dame Muriel Eggleshaw and Sir Hubert Humphreys, and even then government borrowing was still way off its target of 0%. The National Health Service was on its knees but its bosses were told that was their fault and to make further cuts. The army, navy, and air force chiefs ditto, even though the defence of the realm was, to quote Sir Ronald Biggins, Head of the Armed Forces: “In severe jeopardy.”

As were the lives of those worst affected by reductions in welfare benefits. In all the major cities, homelessness was rife, especially amongst the young, and street crime statistics were up as the result of the ongoing frustration caused by the disparity between the incomes of the super rich and those of the super poor. Why should we suffer, objected the latter, when the mega rich, including the two-faced politicos and Missus Queen, could hide their trillions from the taxman in offshore accounts instead of paying their fair share into the wealth of the nation? And all this at the same time as Westminster ponces had porn on their computers and groped any staffer that took their fancy. Revolution was in the air, no doubt about it.

Added to these widespread woes, there were two other specific factors causing the PM increasing angst. These were:

1) The ignominy of her hubris in calling a general election to boost her majority in parliament to hundreds, and instead seeing her government finishing up with a majority of only two.

2) The debâcle of the Brexit negotiations with Brussels, which, by any definition, were at best faltering and at worst fucked because the Brit negotiators were considered by bemused Europeans to be historically deluded gung-ho Brit prats to whom they were unprepared to offer any concessions whatsoever. Yet more embarrassingly, there remained the suspicion that the 2016 Brexit referendum itself had been compromised by interference from Russian president Igor Ripurpantzov and his team of Internet hackers in St Petersburg. In short, the UK government was pretty much on its knees, in the light of which it’s not hard to imagine how keen the PM was on the creation of any media story, however mythical, to deflect the public gaze from the morass of sewage through which she and her government were currently wading.

In a blessed moment one sleepless night, however, what the PM thought of as her “super-acumen” was catalysed. It was while watching re-tweets of the madman in the White House that she suddenly spotted light at the end of this awful tunnel. “Switch the story and find a worse one with a real BAD guy to blame” was the essence of the madman’s messages, which, albeit attributed to a madman, didn’t seem so mad at all.

“Mmm,” she mused as the woes reverberated through the few neurons still functioning in her ditsy brain.

And then, bingo, just like that, she had it. Of course, of course , the Trotskyite megalomaniac bonkers banker with links to the Kremlin! That should do the trick all right. Nothing the nation would love her for more than a spot of mudslinging at the old Ruskie enemy, especially if it involved one of the nation’s much-hated City bankers. A win-win situation, no question about it. All she needed on board now was the latest model 007 from MI5 or MI6 to hunt down the demon and haul him up before the courts to validate her tale. From zero to hero she could go overnight.

“ YESSSS ,” she yipped, punching her pillows and, by accident, her snoring husband who said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake , Clarissa.”

That was what all this had to do with Jeremy Crawford, who had been chosen yet again.

It was the following morning that the PM addressed an emergency meeting of her twitchy cabinet with her new brainwave idea.

“What we need at this historic juncture in our proud history, chaps and chapesses,” she told them, “is a dose of true British grit to steer Mister and Missus Joe Public’s attention away from all the smears and fake news threatening to envelop us. Instead we shall have the true story of roguery, treachery and international intrigue undertaken by the Trot megalomaniac bonkers banker chappie—only to be thwarted at the critical moment by the sang froid, suavity, sharp-shooting skills, and dare one say it all ure, of the Secret Service’s top agent who will be answering directly to… me .”

“Jolly dee, tip top, Pee Em,” barked the home secretary, Janus facedly, seeing as she nurtured aspirations of ousting the PM and becoming PM herself.

“Great, triff, brill,” echoed the foreign secretary. Also Janus facedly, given he had exactly the same ambitions as those of the home secretary.

And, to her gratification, the rest of the ministers happily trilled along to the same song sheet, praising the PM with statements such as “genius,” “gosh,” “super,” and “go for it.” That was the measure of the hypocrisy of the British cabinet, all of them, unbeknownst to either the home or foreign secretaries, running covert campaigns to unseat the PM and replace her with them selves. And this latest batty idea looked the perfect means of achieving just that, a classic case of hoisting herself by her own petard, thus leaving the path wide open for any one of them to succeed her.

“Righty- ho , then,” said the PM, as oblivious to such internecine plotting as she was to practically everything else. “I’ll get right on it. Cabinet dismissed.”

At which the fractious bunch trudged out of the chamber swivel-eyed and muttering to each other behind their hands, while the PM picked up the phone to a top secret joint line shared by Dame Muriel Eggleshaw at MI6 and Sir Hubert Humphreys at MI5 to demand they appoint to the case the newest and most improved 007 they had on their books to serve up the head of the megalomaniac bonkers banker on a platter.

Initially when the PM got “right on it,” her call to MI5 and MI6 went unanswered as the result, so a recorded message told her, of a “temporary but catastrophic failure in the communication system caused by government austerity cuts.”