The Madness of King Boris

Twilight of the Clods

On the morning of July 7 the King woke up from uneasy dreams and found himself transformed into a loser. Outside he heard the strains of the Bay City Rollers wafting out of Steve Bray’s amp. Didn’t that bastard ever sleep? In the next room Carrie was still working over the last of the wallpaper with the steam machine. For some reason Rees-Mogg was lying in bed beside him, wearing drag. It must have been a hell of a party.

The King reached for the bottle and found it was empty. There was no cocaine on the mirror. He would have to settle for paracetamol. Damn.

For a moment he wondered if the last twenty-four hours had been a dream. Had someone spiked the coke with acid? Was it the mescal? Surely none of it could have been real. Had he really sat opposite the lawyer and his monstrous regiment of women while Javid - Javid! - said he couldn’t trust him anymore?

Javid, who had known for months that he was lying about everything. Who had crawled through every tv studio day after day, month after month, to cover up for him like all the others. Now Javid - Javid! - was telling him enough was enough?

It had to be a hallucination. Like all the other resignations from all the other craven ministers he had selected for their cravenness, the MPs on the payroll, who he had appointed to keep them quiet! Hadn’t they gone along with the scam for the last three years because they knew which side their bread was buttered on? Now even Lee Anderson was saying that he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror? Imagine how the mirror felt.

And yet Anderson had also joined in the chatter about ethics and principle and called on him to resign. The King would have to be more careful with his dealer. Maybe he needed to see a shrink. Or a priest. He was Catholic still, wasn’t he? And then Zahawi. The same man he had appointed Chancellor, who sat next to him nodding when he spoke, had told him to resign! Zahawi, who had arrived in the country as a refugee. If only they had been able to deport them to Rwanda back then.

And all the time the opposition jeered and sneered. The lawyer talked about the lightweight brigade and the ship leaving the rats. How very funny. And the MPs yelled Bye Bye Boris as he left the chamber. How absolutely hilarious. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Why had he had he listened to Crosby and Harri, and agreed to two freaking hours in front of the liaison committee, listening to these non-entities challenging him on every damn thing and even having the gall to take pity on him?

And all the time the resignation letters were racking up. Nothing like it in British history. One of them - what was his name again? - actually looking at him across the liaison committee and resigned by tweet! Since when had these people been able to multi-task? Surely none of this could be true? Surely he hadn’t really told the committee how he went to Evgeny’s party in Tuscany with no security men while he was Foreign Minister, and met Evgeny’s ex-KGB dad at the height of the Skripal poisonings?

Surely that must have been a dream too?

Even as the King rubbed his head, he realised that it had all been real. And as he lay there amongst the crumpled, mescal-stained sheets, the events of the last 24 hours flickered through his mind like a speeded-up movie, accompanied by the soundtrack to Benny Hill.

The evening had been no better. Zahawi and Braverman - Braverman! - telling him to resign for the good of the country when they wouldn’t even resign themselves for the good of the country! Had Braverman really gone on Peston to announce a leadership bid and promising to rid the country of ‘woke rubbish’? And why was Steve bloody Baker wandering round the tv studios with a two-day stubble and his shirt open to reveal a thong round his neck, while making his own bid? What the hell was happening?

The King sat up and looked at the mirror he had broken with his fist. Outside the boarded-up window he heard a knock. He looked out and saw Matt Hancock at the top of a ladder wearing a black turtleneck and waving his CV. Couldn’t that hyperactive elf ever stop? Jesus.

And why did Carrie have the steam machine on the whole time? It was like being in the hold of a ship; Ben Traven’s death ship. The King put on his crown and shuffled downstairs, still in his underwear. Nadine was staring out of the boarded up windows with a shotgun, and a cartridge belt around her Scarlet O’Hara dress.

There was something about her that made him think of Bardot in Viva Maria. God, she was loyal. He knew she hadn’t slept. She gave him a loving look, which he did not return. He knew she would die with him, but did he want to die? Not bloody likely, he thought, as he stepped over Therese Coffey’s snoring body and the corpses of the two staffers who Dom had beaten to death the previous night.

The King nearly slipped on the skin that Gove had shed. He let out a curse. No one responded. Guto Harri was staring at his mobile phone. Truss was posing for her photographer and deciding which musical soundtrack to use for her next TikTok video. Big Ben Wallace was playing with his Action Man doll. Crosby was booking a flight back to Australia.

Dom was staring at the wall, holding a bloody truncheon on his lap, already resigned to his life sentence, and perhaps a little relieved that it was all over. On the other side of the room the torso of Peter Bone was crawling round the floor trying to make contact with his head.

“How many is it?” the King took a swig from the half-empty can of Carlsberg.

“Fifty.” Harri’s mouth twitched. “ Brandon Lewis and Whately now.”

“Whately? You’re kidding me, right?”

Harri gave him a pitying smile and shook his head. Was he the one who had suggested that they present the resignations as an example of slimmed-down government? The King couldn’t remember. It was all so foggy. Was he having a stroke? He stared at the desk as Harri pushed the latest version of the resignation letter towards him. The King didn’t even look at it. There was no way he was signing it. No way.

Because he had been chosen by destiny to be the World King and World Kings did not resign. He was Churchill. He would destroy his own party if it tried to make him go. He would destroy all of them; the 1922 Committee, the men in grey suits, the red wallers and the blue shire nimbies.

He would reveal every sordid secret that he had concealed for so long. He would call an election even if he had no party. He would form his own party. He would march on Rome…or Thanet. Like Don Lope de Aguirre, he would call down the wrath of God on his raft of monkeys and establish a new empire of dirt in the ruins of the UK.

Because he was Brexit. He was the essence of the British people. He was the World King. He had played the wall game at Eton. He had never lost. Never experienced any reversal. All his life people had laughed at him and laughed with him. All his life someone else had been around to clean up the messes he made.

And yet, even then, in that barricaded darkness, the World King sensed dimly that the end had come. Outside, the country hovered in expectation. He knew they were out there sitting in Richmond cafes, staring at him with the numb horror of people who had finally realised what they voted for.

They were deluded and ungrateful! They had been tricked by the mainstream media - the same media that had turned against him. Hadn’t he saved them from Covid? Hadn’t he given them a treaty that he was now reneging from? Hadn’t he sent bazookas to Ukraine?

How dare they ask him to leave? And yet they had. And now the World-King sat down and rubbed his belly and looked at the resignation letter again, and he knew that he would resign. But he would not go. He would stay on till October, because that would give him time to call Zelensky for a photoshoot. Perhaps he could organise a coup. Or he could watch the other contenders disgrace themselves so much that the same people who were calling for him to go would now call him back.

The possibilities were endless. And the more the thought about it, the more it became clear. The World-King would resign. He would do it for the good of the party and the good of the country. But most of all he would do it, for the same reason he had done everything else; for himself.

Because you never knew. After the last twenty-four hours, four months was a long time. And so he smiled to himself and took another swig of Carlsberg, because that is how World Kings end. Not with a bang but with a simper.