Dan Carver - Ruin Nation

“Yes, but…”

“And you are a weird loner – let’s not kid ourselves.”

“But…”

“Don’t interrupt. Now, last but not least – drumroll please! – we have Nathaniel Davenport, Leader of the Opposition – now leading the chorus in the Choir Invisible, God rot his righteous soul. Bled to death from an arrow in the femoral artery.”

“Very clever.”

“Yes. Keeps the evidence hidden in his trousers, so to speak. He’s our star turn. So get him on ice and sharpen your skills on the other two. He needs to be perfect. Now how long do you think you’ll need?”

“Do you have any engineers? I could prototype an animatronic skeleton and they could copy it. That’d save time. They’ll need to resize for the woman though. Can’t have her insides a foot and a half taller than her skin.”

“[Tetchily] Yes, yes. I don’t need the technicalities.”

“Yes. [Icily] Sorry… Sir.”

“On a different note, I see you’re using the phone. Got the number then?”

“Yes, Sir. Though I don’t know how. I…”

“Good. Got to go now. Goodbye.”

Now let’s jump to the backstage area of the ‘Le Monde’ exhibition Centre. Our ingredients are: one Malmot; one Jupiter; one bespectacled speechwriter; a sound technician with an old laptop computer; eight Goons (assorted); one dead anti-landmine campaigner; one dead Shadow Home Secretary; one dead Leader of the Opposition.

The speechwriter has a problem with something. He’s a moany old git with spectacles and long, wavy hair.

“I just think that the Minister for Agriculture would give the statement, Sir. It’s an Agriculture-related kind of thing.”

“I don’t care,” answers Malmot, his nose buried in a weapons systems catalogue. “That lot out there, they certainly don’t care. Anyone who might will be intoxicated. Anyone who did is mad. You. You are the only person in this entire country who cares.”

“But attention to detail, Sir, it’s…”

“Not necessary when the public has the attention span of a three-year old. A stupid three-year old.”

“But we’ve got a Minister for Agriculture here. Why aren’t we using him? It doesn’t make sense, Sir.”

“Does anything we’re going to say today make sense? Sure, there’s a sort of pseudo-logic underpinning it all, but it’s really just offensiveness for its own sake.”

“But…”

“You’ve got to play to your audience, boy. We’re dealing with the indigenous Englishman. Outrage is all these brain-dead chav goobers can express. Except pride in their own stupidity, of course.”

Now we jump to the Main Hall, Le Monde Exhibition Centre and an assembled cast of press, policemen and punters: human effluent in general.

“So let’s just recount what we know about Davenport,” says the white-haired reporter in the grey trench coat to the camera wrapped in barbwire. “The man, not the crockery! Ah hah! Well, he’s a man on a mission. But does that mission extend beyond redecorating Downing Street? Detractors say he’s all roundabout and no horses. ‘Where’s the policy behind the rhetoric?’ Supporters, however, claim…”

“Previously,” says the concrete-haired female reporter with the alcoholic shakes to the large camera armoured with riot shields, “Davenport was best known for his role as Shadow Foreign Secretary – regarded as the most pointless job in politics by many, given our country’s status as the leper of Europe.”

“So far,” continues the white-haired reporter, “Davenport’s time in Opposition has been characterised by a distinct lack of dramatic action – exactly what we’d expect from a stop-gap leader who…”

“What’s the problem?” drawls the paralytic cameraman.

“I was going to say he poses no real threat to the Prime Minister. But I don’t know who the Prime Minister is anymore.”

“Just start mouthing a name and I’ll jerk focus like someone’s bumped into my arm,” says the cameraman, swigging on a container of meths.

“Davenport!” bawls the reporter in the bright red suit from the late night gossip show to his co-presenter’s breasts, “What do we know about Davenport? What do you want to know about him? Well, he’s here to give some kind of big speech… but let’s forget about all that boring stuff, eh Roxy? Here’s three facts you may not know about our possible future Prime Minister!”

Roxy’s lilac contact lenses home in on her autocue.

“ Fact One:” she slurs, her swollen red mouth chomping up and down on some words. What’s she using for lipstick? Car paint? You could listen to her talk but you’d regret the effort afterwards.

“And they say men have the damaged chromosome,” says Malmot charmingly as we watch from a discreet balcony.

Roxy’s red-suited companion looks like he spreads diseases round fashionable gatherings.

“There’s simply no reason for that man to exist!” Malmot fumes. “Nail him to a cross and boil him alive in raw shit. At least that way he’ll provide some entertainment.”

Roxy throws back her head like a howling wolf.

“Doooooooon’t quote me on that !” she bawls, and they head off to exchange genital parasites in the toilets.

I’m wearing a false moustache, but it’s unlikely anyone would recognise the hero of Battencross Manor anyway. I’m just not that impressive lined up alongside barely legal TV presenters with drug habits and Tourette’s.

The conference centre buzzes beneath us, the atmosphere tense like a hanging. Who’ll die today, I wonder.

The Nation’s alcoholism works in our favour. We want them ill-informed and irrational. We’ve our own journalists, ready to deploy, but there’s no need just yet. The independent press are doing us proud. Wonky-bollocked bullshit’s been mislabelled as Fact. Diagrams legitimise distilled-conspiracy theory and a mix of half-truths and downright lies ensure our walnut-brained audience has stoked itself into a drunken rage. There’s a very real threat of violence – if we handle things correctly – and a sense that something truly terrible is about to happen.

The public being the public have decided that whatever Davenport’s going to say, they won’t like it. So they line the auditorium with blank banners and paints, ready to protest against ‘it’ the moment they know what ‘it’ is.

Prowling the aisles is the self-same child who tried to flog me a pistol on my hospital trip, now selling rotting veg at exorbitant prices to dissidents and old reactionaries alike. Credit cards accepted. And, for cash, you can get a nice little half-brick. And, for a banknote of the right denomination in the pocket of the right person, there’s always an upgrade to a ringside seat. If you can’t inflict a head wound from that distance, there must be something wrong with you.

Our speechwriter’s looking nervous, twisting his long, wavy hair and blathering about ‘context’ and so on and suchlike. We all laugh when he mentions ‘believability’.

“It’s too late now,” I tell him, grinning.

Malmot ’s looking at me. He’s cackling to himself. Am I really that funny?

“Well, we’ve wound up the right-wingers simply by being here,” he laughs, “but Davenport’s crowd are lefties.”

“Tolerant bastards!” I swear. “You’ll have to go some to offend those sons of bitches.”

“Hah!” goes Malmot. “Now, the second best way to wind up a lefty is to tell them they can’t have something. It doesn’t matter what it is. It doesn’t even matter if it exists or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s dangerous and it might kill them. Tell a lefty he can’t have a hat full of sea snakes and he’ll run round with a placard and an earnest whine until he gets one. It doesn’t matter about the poor sea snakes, who might not want to be in a hat. It’s the lefty’s right to have a hat full of sea snakes that counts. And he’ll carry on pounding that fact into you until his flesh bubbles up in venom-filled fistulas and his heart explodes. Then God help the poor children with ouija boards hoping to contact Satan. It’s yawns all round as our lefty’s ghost gets through and treats them to an inconclusive report thanking the snakes for their public-spirited cooperation.”