by Michael Foot
Andrew couldn’t think of anything to say. The fact that Chloe was here, talking so matter-of-factly about this subject, and her own past involvement was shock enough. Andrew turned the suggestion over in his mind; and the more he thought about it, the more he mentally cursed Michael’s logic. Here was a proposal that couldn’t be described as illegal even if it was unsavoury. And it was something that Michael knew Andrew could perfectly well do, if he had the stomach for it. But did he?
15
The following Friday, Chloe drove Andrew down to a village just outside Aldershot. As before, Andrew was struck by the little publicity given to there being any Angel-related activity here at all and by the serenity that seemed to surround him as he got out of the car.
The manager here – Mandy – was probably the oldest Angel he had met so far. She was a matronly figure who, within minutes, Andrew could see would probably be brilliant for the job in hand; watching over and coaxing forward people needing to rebuild their self-esteem and their lives. He felt like telling her his own life story quite unbidden!
Mandy explained that the latest course was ending with the awards ceremony that evening. Both the ‘winners’ of this course were women and Mandy quickly ran through what they had achieved. “Both have been here for about 4 months. In that time, both have shed about 20% of their body weight. I won’t bore you with the details; but some scientists came up with a fascinating discovery a few years ago; which is that obese people lose a lot of their taste buds, which in turn inclines them to eat more. We think we’ve found a way to restore those buds and therefore make weight loss both easier and more lasting.
Anyway, both women have become really physically fit, had a complete make-over to their life-style, wardrobe and outlook on life. Sally has qualified to drive a truck which is what she has always wanted to do; Shirl has completed a quite tricky French language course and is well on the way to finishing her training as a nanny, which is what she has always wanted to do. You’ll find both of them great; but, equally, both have been on a pretty tight rein for these last four months so they’ll be, shall we say, in seriously celebratory mood. I think you should be with Sally tonight, Shirl tomorrow. We’ve set aside a little room where you can leave your stuff and, maybe, get a bit of extra sleep during the day tomorrow. We really appreciate what you’re doing and I think you may enjoy it more than your look now suggests you think you will…….”
As Chloe drove Andrew back to London on Sunday evening, two days later, Andrew had mixed feelings over what Mandy had said. If Sally handled her lorry as she had handled him on Friday evening, he pitied any trucker who got in her way in her new life. Shirl, in contrast, had been quite sweet, though demanding; and fortunately for him, Andrew had indeed managed to get a bit of down time and sleep during the day on Saturday. What he had established with both girls, though, was just how miserable their lives had been before starting this course and what incredible personal efforts they had put in, during the course, to get as far as they had. As Shirl said “I used to wake up in the morning – at 6.30 – and imagine all the unpleasant things I could do to my instructors when they put me through the hoops during the day. By 7pm each evening, I was so physically and mentally shattered that even those thoughts of revenge couldn’t keep me going. Thank God, that’s when they brought out the life-style and other changes, so that – when I finally fell asleep exhausted around 10 pm – my head would once again be filled with hope that I, me, I could get where I wanted. Nearly all the girls who began 3-4 months ago kept going. We all know we are going to need continuing contact with Angels as we go forward. But we have made friends for life – and not just among the girls but with our tormentors too.”
Chloe hadn’t asked him anything about how the weekend had gone, when she reappeared on Sunday to drive him home. He had come to expect – and much liked – the secret smile that often lit up her face at times like that. Andrew always read it as saying ‘I’ve been there, I know how you’re thinking’. He also always fervently hoped that this was all part of a bonding process where, one day, she might say to him the things he longed to say to her.
16
This time, Andrew didn’t have to do anything to get his reward for the second labour. He had told Chloe, on the way home, that he wanted to meet one of the key policy people who advised Michael. Around 10 a.m. Tuesday, this very individual – Matthew – was on the phone to Andrew, inviting him to come and visit the Policy Unit, which it turned out, was housed in one of the less fashionable parts of West London.
“I don’t feel like trogging out to see you” Andrew said. “Is there any chance you could come to me? I’ll throw in a good long lunch if you do.” By now, Andrew had realised that the Angels, at least the non-Muslim ones, certainly had no aversion to alcohol or good food. Andrew reckoned a boozy lunch would be just the way to open this guy up and it could probably go on the Colonel’s expense account; and indeed Matthew jumped at the chance. Andrew gave Matthew the name of a good gastropub within about a mile of his flat; and they agreed to meet there at noon on Thursday.
Andrew gave little thought to how he would play this. His basic idea would be to ask a few open-ended questions and sit back, let Matthew take the conversation where he would. Matthew proved to be a small wiry individual, of around 30, with sparkling brown eyes and that inner peace that seemed to accompany most Angels he had met. Andrew had never really got close to the policy wonk at Michael’s weekend; and, after preliminary pleasantries, Andrew thought the lunch would be enjoyable even if it didn’t prove particularly enlightening.
Matthew – who made it clear from the outset that he preferred to be known as ‘Matt’ – also made clear at the outset that he had as much time as Andrew would need and that he liked both red wine and a good steak. Within 45 minutes, Andrew and he were well into a good bottle of Beaujolais and what promised to be excellent fillet steaks. Matt briefly sketched in his own history, which was basically that he had left university with a degree that brought him little in the way of worthwhile career opportunities, and had joined the Civil Service for around 5 years. By that point, it had become obvious to him – and to his bosses – that he was totally unsuited to working in a large bureaucracy or to toeing a policy line which he did not endorse 100%. Fortunately for Matt, by that point, he had met and started dating a girl who had been drawn into the Angel web. To help keep her, but also because the more he saw of Michael the more he liked what he heard, Matt had eventually become a full-time policy adviser for the Angels. The connections he had made in the Civil Service gave him a partial ready-made contact circle, to get him started on some of the policy issues he was now being asked to address.
Andrew listened with interest, not least because he could see the parallel between Matt’s case and his own in respect of Chloe. “So, what happens?” asked Andrew, refilling Matt’s wine glass. “How does policy get formulated, agreed and disseminated? How much have you covered? I guess, over the next year you are going to have to come out with policies right across the board, if you want to convince the electorate that the Angels offer a safe pair of hands?”
Matt paused, with a good-sized piece of steak on his fork. “Well, it works roughly like this. Michael has given us a series of ‘propositions’ – we call then the Five Commandments – that all Angel policy has to be able to show it will meet. Basically simple things like the policy must be non-discriminatory; it must produce clear social welfare benefits overall even if not for every group affected. A connecting theme is of ‘reasonableness’; what we think we can sell to voters as ‘reasonable’. There are also some ‘nice to have’ features of policy like ‘smaller Government rather than larger’ and, wherever possible, we feed off work we already do – like the rehab courses. We want to show that, if we were able to get our hands on the massive resources that Government currently uses, we could get more bang per buck spent, or a better bang.
Finally, there are a few no-go areas, perhaps the bigg
est being defence and health plus nothing ever on the Royal Family! No Angel would ever welcome violence but Michael concluded a long time ago that the average voter still wants the UK to pack a major military punch, even if no-one can think of circumstances in which we might use that punch without the Americans. So basically more bang per buck, literally for defence. Likewise the NHS. No-one in their right minds would argue that the NHS does not need drastic reform, and more money in some areas less in others; but again, in modern politics, it’s just impossible to discuss changes like that sensibly. We are just going to have to get in power and make changes incrementally.”
Matt renewed his enthusiastic attack on both the meat and the wine. “So, we start with the Commandments; we draw up a series of ideas, these go back and forth – first with Michael and then with test panels of Angels and voters. Out of that eventually comes a set of policy proposals, with the line always being that, in some areas quite reasonably, we can’t possibly put up details until we get our hands on the levers of power.”
“Could you take me through one or two areas to show how that is working?” asked Andrew. “I presume in most cases, you haven’t gone public on much yet, as that will need to await the run-up to the Election. But, as I’m sure you’ve been told, you should treat me as an insider. And I promise that what you tell me won’t go further than this restaurant.” (Unless you count what I’m going to tell the Colonel, added Andrew mentally.)
“Hmm” said Matt. “Well let’s start with tax policy. To listen to public debate, you’d think that everyone wants to spend more money on almost everything you could think of but not pay more tax themselves. The work we’ve done suggests a quite different picture. The Tories aren’t trusted because many voters think any extra money the Tories spend will go to their sharp-suited business ‘friends’. Labour are thought to be untrustworthy, that they will waste any money they spend. Likewise, on tax. What concerns most people is that the present system is manifestly unfair. Rich foreigners and multinational companies for example play the tax avoidance/evasion game brilliantly and successive UK Governments have effectively turned a blind eye. Out of that mix, it’s not actually hard to come up with a set of proposals that suggest lower overall rates of marginal tax but stops the really rich and well-advised wriggling out, paying next to nothing. A bit like your footballer but on a huge scale.” Not for the first time, Andrew realised that literally everything he did with an Angel somehow seemed to get on the news circuit they had among themselves. If he ever got access to this ‘magic circle’, was he going to have fun finding out what Chloe and the others were up to – and what they had thought of him!
Matt went on. “Of course, in the event, there will be a whole lot of shouting if such policies are ever introduced. Rich Russians and Arabs threatening to leave London; places like the Cayman Islands screaming about the impact on cutting out tax havens; big multinationals saying they’ll stop selling coffee in London or hold back on bringing in new high-tech gadgets to their shops. But we think – and more importantly we think we can show voters – that this is nearly all hot air. Across the globe, for example, multinationals currently pay less than 10% of their profits in tax to any Government; and even that money often goes to Governments, like the Irish, who don’t provide the ‘home front’ where these profits are actually earned.
Now, take something quite different – reforming Parliament. Despite changes in recent years, most people still think there are far too many snouts in the trough, drawing pay and expenses. Everyone who thinks about it knows really that Westminster needs to be shut and refurbished properly over about five years to make it habitable again, although you’d never get the current rabble of MPs to agree that. Our policies – which will include big cuts in the number of MPs and in the House of Lords, 5 years for Parliament in Birmingham while Westminster is redone – will go down a storm with most voters. And –perhaps most important – it will leave the main parties completely at sea, as they have spent years defending what is essentially indefensible.
Another incredibly popular policy will be one of the first policy changes we will make in this area, which is that no Angel MP will draw a salary or ask for expenses (instead these will be paid for by the Angel Foundation, not out of the public purse). All our policy testing suggest that these ideas will get a great reception, while at the same time burnishing the reputation we want for being practical and thrifty. Some of them will play better outside London than in it; but to be honest we’re not expecting miracles from London constituencies, so that probably doesn’t matter.”
By this time, they had polished off the steaks and the first bottle of wine. Andrew was enjoying sitting back and letting all this flow over him, especially as he agreed with most of the specifics that Matt came up with. They moved on to dessert, high-calorie disasters but Andrew, for one, had been going easy on the calories for a bit so he didn’t care. He ordered a second bottle of wine. And by the time they had drunk that, and had coffee, Andrew was ready to pour himself into the street and say farewell for now to Matt, who seemed to have enjoyed the whole thing immensely. This had been a painless, indeed pleasant, way to spend half a day.
17
When he had sobered up later that evening, Andrew reckoned that, even if he hadn’t got much new to offer the Colonel, the lunch had still been worthwhile. In particular, it had established that Michael was serious about going into the next Election with a range of policies prepared; and that his bravado was backed up by something thought out. What in fact the Electorate would make of the detail of some of these policies, only time would tell. But, as Mark had made clear, the Angel hope was that the main parties would not try to throw the spotlight on the plausibility or economics of an Angel platform until near the Election, preferring instead in the early months to go on scoring points off each other. They were relying too that on the specifics of what the Angels had done thus far (the rehab schemes, the young family facilities and so on), they would be able to show that they had delivered value using their own money and improving lives.
The next development was unexpected. Andrew got a call directly from one of Michael’s inner circle, to say that – if he were free – a car would pick him up the next morning, as ‘Michael needs to see you’. Andrew wasn’t going to miss a chance like that and readily agreed without pressing further, other than to establish that an overnight stay wasn’t needed.
As arranged, a car – with a taciturn but not unfriendly driver – turned up for him at 10.30 the next morning; and he found himself retracing the steps Chloe had taken a couple of weeks earlier. Andrew was obviously going to meet Michael again where he had before.
By the time he arrived, it was 12.30 and he was promptly met by a Sister and taken straight into lunch. This was rather like the meals Andrew had attended before, good food, self-service, open and business-like. There were about 20 other people there and, in the distance, Andrew could see that one of them was the policy wonk ‘Matt’. Perhaps this was one of their days for talking over and testing out some of the policies being created.
Michael himself wasn’t there. But immediately after lunch, Andrew was ushered into one of the side rooms off the dining area, where he found Michael seated, alone. The man looked a little tired, or perhaps preoccupied was a better word. But Michael turned in his chair, and bade Andrew sit down. “Well done with the first 2 labours. I hope you got what you wanted in return, as your reward” said Michael. “We need to talk about the third and final labour.”
Andrew made clear that was fine by him. Michael sat quietly for a couple of minutes and then began. “I was going to ask you to take on what is probably a rather thankless and quite lengthy task. We’ve been working for some time on one of the more intractable problems of recycling. You know we’re pretty hot on environmental issues; and one of the best ways we can show voters, especially the Millennials, that we are different from the rest, is to give evidence of how we would be different. We’ve done most
of the easy part. We persuaded Baldens ages ago, for example, to revamp their packaging, cut waste and make it easy to recycle. We can readily show that this is one way for everyone to go.
But we’ve also had scientists and engineers working for some time now on one of the really tricky problems, which is that plastic waste, when it comes in for recycling, is a hotchpotch of different kinds of plastic. The heavier plastics can typically be ground, washed and melted down, to turn into pellets that eventually can be used to produce bottles and similar things. The main problem has been that the different types of plastic aren’t compatible. I’ll spare you a physics lesson. But, for example, polyvinyl chloride – PVC to you which you’ll find in cling film, say – degrades polyethylene terephthalate, PET, which you’ll find in plastic bottles; and vice versa.
Now, we’ve made a breakthrough that will allow much more plastic to be sorted and reused, though I have to admit even we can’t do it yet on a basis that makes much commercial sense. And we’re building a new recycling plant on the coast to demonstrate it. Trouble is none of that is very news-worthy or photogenic. Hence why I thought of you.
Someone’s first idea was that we should kit out a boat to harvest plastic from the area that is now known as ‘the sea of plastic’ because there is so much rubbish there. Unfortunately, no-one thought through the implications. The sea of plastic is a huge area between California and Hawaii. How would we get the boat out there in ecologically acceptable fashion, collect the stuff and then get it back to our new ‘factory’? I can see it would have made good TV; and we got an independent company interested, who are sure in turn that they can on-sell it to the BBC. But they’re primarily interested in our new processes, so we’ve come up with a much better idea – scavenge a lot of plastic that’s already here in the UK, get that to the factory and do the TV programme about that.