‘George, this is all you ever do. I watch you, your lips move as though you’re talking to me, I listen, I even concentrate, but all I hear is gobbledegook. Incomprehensible nonsense about PPPs and PSBRs and OEICs and PESC rounds. Like you’re still on some acid trip at Oxford. Can’t you come down to earth for once? Say what you mean?’
George Vertue, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man noted for his East Anglian reticence and who at university had experimented with nothing more lethal than an occasional mutton biryani, winced and sought time by smoothing out some invisible flaw in the nap of the brown baize tablecloth. ‘I’m trying, Prime Minister,’ he replied. ‘Believe me, I’m trying.’
The two sat alone in the Cabinet Room on opposite sides of the table, the leader young, with foundation still upon his cheeks and hair a suspicious shade of chestnut, the second-in-command neither young nor old, simply beyond time, with a sad, almost molten expression reminiscent of a walrus that had spent too long at Whipsnade.
‘Seriously, George, we need something that’s going to sell in Salford.’ The Prime Minister had just returned from a tour of the north-west and was, as ever, keen to reveal his roots on the factory floor, even though in practice they amounted to little more than a student vac spent sweeping the floors of a metal-bashing operation outside Basingstoke. ‘Up there,’ he continued, eyes raised as though Salford were part of the spirit world, ‘they think a PESC round is a day out ratting with terriers. Language, man. Language. Remember the focus groups.’
‘What I’m attempting to communicate’ – the Walrus counterattacked in an attempt to stifle the Prime Minister’s march through the provinces – ‘is that unless we do something quickly, all they’ll be selling in Salford, or anywhere else, come to that, is their wives and daughters. We’ve got to find another five billion or else.’
‘Or else what?’
‘Or else our masters in Brussels won’t allow us a permit to run a car boot sale.’
Jonathan Bendall studied his Chancellor, a former don, of media studies, bottle-bottom glasses and eyebrows like seaweed washed up on a shore. Depending on one’s point of view Vertue was either a notoriously dour man or a cold-blooded bastard. Perhaps in the end it didn’t really matter which. A Chancellor’s personality always played second fiddle to his navigational skills, and right now the economy was stuck fast on a sandbank and facing an approaching riptide. Whispers of impending crisis had even penetrated behind the closed doors that led off the Treasury’s endless oval corridor, and they were always the last to know.
Bendall took a classical view of such situations. If the gods were angry, they needed placating. A sacrifice, some head upon the plate. He had a reputation for being a willing carver and had already put two Chancellors to the sword since the last election, but it had been a cut too far and now the dining rooms of Westminster echoed to the cries of angry ghosts auditioning for the role of Banquo. No, laying down the life of yet another Chancellor was no longer an option; they were in this together, up to their necks. He would have to continue to wade with the Walrus, no matter how dire it got.
‘What about the Contingency Fund, George?’
‘What Contingency Fund?’ The seaweed wriggled on Vertue’s brow. It was as close to a display of emotion as he ever came. ‘The last of that was swept away during the autumn floods.’
‘Nothing left?’
‘Not even a tidemark.’
The Prime Minister sighed and felt the sand shifting beneath his feet. ‘OK, George, so that’s the bad news. What’s the good news?’
The seaweed wriggled once more, but then subsided.
‘Come on, George, humour me? Or do I book an appointment at the Palace this evening?’
They both knew this game. The Chancellor was a man of little traditional charm but meticulous planning, which made him an excellent player in the guerrilla warfare of Whitehall. He had a reputation for never opening negotiations without at least one hand grenade to toss across the table. The Walrus always went armed.
‘My suggestion, for what it’s worth …’ – the Walrus examined his leader with an expression he usually reserved for a plate of bad oysters – ‘is that we lay to rest the Youth Unemployment Programme.’
It was as if he had suggested legalizing incest.
‘Scrap the Yuppie initiative? But that was a core election commitment.’
The Walrus flapped his fins distractedly, as if he were irritated by flies. ‘We could always close a few hospitals, or even cut the old age pension. If you’d prefer.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Bendall responded breathlessly, struggling to keep up. The approaching sea seemed to have become boiling hot. The Walrus smiled. It was not a natural act.
‘Cut Yuppies?’ Bendall continued. He drew in a deep breath. ‘We’d lose the Employment Secretary.’
‘A tragic loss.’
‘But wait a bit.’ Bendall was lengthening his stride. ‘He’s muttering about wanting to go at the next reshuffle anyway. So why not get in there first, bring the changes forward? Better to push him, don’t you think, rather than let him jump?’ Already Bendall’s keen presentational nose was to the fore. It was said he could sell snow to Eskimos but his speciality was selling indulgences to the middle classes, a task he had performed with remarkable success in every region from Hampshire to the Highlands. Up to now.
‘We’d need some justification,’ he continued. ‘Apart from the bloody obvious.’
The Walrus blew his nose on a large red handkerchief, shaking himself as he collected his thoughts. ‘Well, I suppose we start by rounding up the usual suspects. You know, the competition from Eastern Europe. The financial crisis in Latin America. Short-sighted bankers. That sort of thing.’
‘Perhaps we could get Brussels to bail us out.’ Bendall threw the suggestion into the air to see how it might fly. ‘Could we get the Commission to rule the Yuppie programme invalid? You know, not only save the money but also get a good stand-up row with the French.’
‘It might be arranged.’ The Walrus nodded in appreciation. ‘But we’d still be stuck with a substantial increase in the unemployment figures.’
The Prime Minister brightened, as though television lights had been switched on. ‘No, not necessarily. You see, I’ve long been of the opinion that the unemployment figures are …’ – he paused, like a conductor with baton raised to attract the attention of the orchestra – ‘that the unemployment figures are exceptionally crude. One enormous rubbish pit into which everything is dumped. Young people who’ve never had a proper job. The middle-aged who may never get another job. The unqualified, the infirm, the idle and apathetic.’ He loved toying with phrases. Many of his policies had been built on little more than the appeal of alliteration. Phrases were so flexible. If one didn’t work out, you changed it, found another. Didn’t do much for continuity but made for great sound bites. ‘You know, I feel an overwhelming sense of public responsibility to make sure the unemployment figures are cleaned up. And broken down. Into their constituent parts. They need to be rationalized. Redefined. Redistributed. Add a few categories here, maybe take a few categories there.’
‘Create so much smoke that no one will be able to see through it clearly enough to know what
