Things haven’t gone to plan for the PM. According to the script drawn up by her rather hapless advisors back in April, by this point any remaining dissidents were supposed to have been lying at the bottom of the Irish Sea and she herself was due to be anointed with the Royal Wax of the Imperial Beehive. Instead she’s spending 24 hours a day on the phone to crackpot Ulsterfolk with accents so densely-packed you could use them to blow up a betting shop, while any courtiers who haven’t had their heads chopped off were last heard of making up some absolute f*cking nonsense about goat’s skin. Plus Mr Murdoch’s not at all happy, and he’s not the only one. Here’s a short list of the people she has to appease if she wants to stay in power beyond Tuesday teatime.
1. Rupert Murdoch
When Murdoch summoned May immediately after the election announcement in order to hand her her instructions, he told her in a very loud, grouchy, sort-how-you’d-imagine-an-aging-pedo-to-sound voice GET MICHAEL BLOODY GOVE IN THE BLOODY CABINET. Luckily for her she then screwed up the election, so at this point she can appoint whoever she wants. She might as well make Gerry Adams Minister for Sport or dig up Jimmy Savile and make him Secretary of State for Media and Children’s Hospitals. Whatever she does, she no longer risks attracting opprobrium, simply because there is simply no more opprobrium to be had in the entire country. In fact, given the levels of opprobrium that the British Government is currently attracting from Europe and around the world, global supplies look like running out. Luckily they can be enhanced by another mineral resource, which appears to be infinite: ridicule.
2. Paul Dacre
Imagine the scene. Theresa May, with all her liberal values arraigned alongside her, visits the Labour stronghold of Kensington. She insists that the UK must remain in Single Market and that there must be some measure of free movement, especially for those EU citizens who are settled in the UK. Well, she says that to herself, silently, while nervously sipping her coffee from King Edward VIII chinztware cups. Then the Editor of the Daily Mail turns up, calls her a stupid f*cking c*nt eight times in the first two minutes and orders her to go back to Number 10 and wait for a f*cking email with her f*cking instructions in it.
3. The Saudis
She can’t afford to offend the Saudis, even if they will keep sending their suicide bombers to blow up London. That’s why she continues to (literally) sit on a report which details their plans to do basically just that. In the meantime, as Amber Rudd argues, selling death equipment into the Middle East remains the best guarantee of prosperity and stability for the post-Brexit UK*. Or, you know, not. At least on the next trade mission they’ll be able to send over the DUP as official representatives, and they’re sure to have a huge amount in common with their hosts.
4. The DUP
A lot of commentary on the DUP over the last few days has focussed on how bigoted they are, which is actually in a way unfortunate, because they’re actually more corrupt than they are bigoted. Although, to be fair, they’re also more bigoted than they are corrupt. And vice versa. The initial negotiations over the not-allowed-to-call-it-a-coalition-because-of-the-stupid-bloody-peace-process took precisely as long as it took to say we’llgiveyouwhateveryouwant. There was then a slight delay as everything Arlene Foster said had to be translated from pure hatespeak into something resembling BBC Tory English so that Laura Kuenssberg could try to sell the whole thing to the British public while besmirching, defaming and maligning the opposition, as her contract clearly specifies. They’ve now got as far as establishing that the DUP wants to ban Catholics from public and private office (and transport), hold Orange Marches on Downing Street every Thursday and burn down St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is obviously all fine and dandy. Did you know that Jeremy Corbyn once went to a pub in Belfast where members of Sinn Fein had played darts just three weeks earlier? Oh, you did.
5. The Brexit negotiating teams
“The…what?! Oh, f*ck, I’d forgotten all about that…”
*It’s even more lucrative when you factor in the, er, training that goes into these ‘defence contracts’.
Infinite Coincidence 