Q. So how on earth did this country get into such a pickle in such a short time?
A. Are you the only person who doesn’t know what’s been
going on? Where’ve you been? Planet Zog?
Q. Well, in a way! I’ve just come back from the orbiting
space platform: we have to agree to a political news blackout before we go up.
A. Good grief… Then I’d better fill you in… How did it
start? Well, with good intentions, at least I think so. The Prime Minister, Amy
Ashtree, invoked Article 50 and got her top brains working hard, negotiating
the new deal for Britain. But the negotiations dragged on and on for ages, and
nothing much leaked out, and everybody became restless. We all wanted something
quick and clearcut, so that we could get on with life. But eventually the PM
reported back to the country that the thing couldn’t be done and wasn’t going
to be. My private belief is that this might have been her ingenious plan all
along—to show people that, desirable or not, unravelling our European ties was
literally impossible.
Anyway, it enraged the extreme Brexiteers. The official UKIP
though vocal were ineffective. However, one of their leaders, Reg I. Falange,
had all this time been building up a sort of corps of activists (who soon got
called the Falangists). They began to demonstrate and march—and attack
immigrants. EU migrants were still entering the country because no final deal
had been done on free movement, so the Falangists were on the warpath.
This was bad enough, but the trouble was that the other half
of Brexit hadn’t been sorted either: we’d lost our free trade agreements and
the price of everything, especially food, went shooting up. (You know we only
have a few days’ supply of food in this country? Nearly all of it comes from
abroad.) There was real hardship. The number of people needing foodbanks
rocketed, and the foodbanks couldn’t cope. There was a popular movement called
the Jermynites—followers of Bryce O. Jermyn, who’d all been expelled from the
Labour party. They took up the cudgels on behalf of people struggling with
poverty, disability, and unemployment, and they too began to demonstrate and
march.
It was just at this moment that the government finally
completed the privatization of the NHS. This was the last straw for the
Jermynites, who became very assertive, coordinating strikes, occupying public
buildings, putting up barricades, and so on. Of course, there were EU
immigrants in their ranks and these soon became a target for the Falangists.
The result: pitched battles on the streets, violence, murders. We had a
three-sided fight: Falangists, Jermynites, and the Government all at odds.
The Government tried to pull together a sort of Centrist
Alliance with the support of the official parties, but it didn’t stop the
violence. Then wham! there was a terrorist outrage in London. It was more
spectacular than harmful—not all that many died—but there was a lot of
destruction. Suddenly we saw armed police everywhere. And soldiers. And when
the Falangists and Jermynites became violent, they were fired on. And more
frightening still, some of them were armed, and they fired back. It was like
Syria: three-way battles in the streets.
Q. But it seems calm enough now?
A. On the surface! Only because of the American
intervention!
Q. The what?
A. Well, you can imagine the consternation all this caused
in the United States: unprecedented civil war in Britain, the pillar of
democracy and so on! But what a gift to a new President a successful
intervention would be. Obviously the Americans have always had a military
contingency plan in case the UK should ever get out of line, so all Trinton
Clump had to do was invoke the plan and, bingo, in a week, this country had
been secured from air, sea, and land.
Westminster now answers to Washington (rather that than Brussels, some would
say!), and armed US troops control the streets. I think they’ll impose a trade
agreement on us—one that suits them, presumably.
Q. And what did the Christians do in all this?
A. The Anglican bishops were rather surprised. They’d been
quietly reflecting on human sexuality. Actually most of the churches had been
thinking that sex or gender in some form was the major problem of the day, so
they hadn’t been very focused on the realities. To be fair, when things got bad, many Christians protested,
against Government cuts, against Falangist hate crimes, against Jermynite
lawlessness, and latterly against the US crackdown on everyone. They all ended
up in the cells. Often with unexpected companions: atheists, secularists,
feminists, Muslims, gays. There was no distinction.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the terrorist target was
Westminster Abbey. As a result, all churches—indeed all religious meeting
places—have been closed ‘for their own safety’. So church life is a bit
disrupted, as you can imagine.
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