Sidetracked

by David Harley

  ‘Tonight we’re within sight of victory. Over the next ten days, the world will be looking at England. We must show them the best of the English character, and the strength of our moral purpose, by comprehensively rejecting this corrupt, self-serving government, which has become a laughing stock in the eyes of our friends in Europe and around the world. We must show that England can rediscover its true self, its true identity. England’s coming home.’

  ‘Victory in this election will belong to those who fight the hardest and want it most. You’ve shown, by your full-hearted energy and commitment, that there’s nothing we can’t achieve together. Let me end by asking you two favours: to make sure that the election that takes place a week on Thursday is free and fair, by resisting all attempts at intimidation and obstruction. And above all, to give your vote to the candidate in your constituency who represents the Save Our Country Alliance. Listen to your heart and soul, think what the future can hold for those you love, and do what you know is right. Good night and good luck.’

  There had been so much to say and so much at stake that the distilling into plain, resonant language and striking the right balance was never going to be easy. As they removed his makeup, Matt thought the statement had come across fairly well. Not quite as brilliantly as he had secretly hoped for, but he felt reasonably satisfied. As always in the first few minutes after these occasions, while pretending to look cool, he craved reassurance and compliments.

  ‘How did I do?’ he asked Sam.

  ‘An unmitigated disaster,’ she replied.

  His face fell.

  ‘That’s surprising. I didn’t think it was that bad.’

  ‘Idiot – you hit them out of the park. You’re on your way to Number Ten. Now let’s go home before you start feeling too pleased with yourself.’

  A small press pack was waiting at the exit from the studio, on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road. Matt greeted them good-naturedly as he walked to his parked car and told them he wouldn’t be taking any questions – he’d said quite enough already that evening. There was a rumble of disappointment among the hacks, as they realised their hour-long wait in the cold had been for nothing.

  ‘So when’s the class war then? When are you going to man the barricades?’ shouted Harry Walker from the Daily Standard into Matt’s face. ‘You’re pretending to be a proper little working class hero, but you’re not fooling us. Coming from a former lobbyist, you’ve got a nerve. You’re just playing with people’s lives to further your own career.’

  It was late and Matt was tired. He knew Harry was trying to wind him up, and he shouldn’t reply, but he wasn’t in the mood to let it go.

  ‘This is serious, Harry. Can’t you act responsibly for once? You’ve been playing games all your life, spewing out hatred and prejudice and whipping up people’s fears. You could say what you wanted because you were always protected. Now your cosy life is coming to an end – you’d better get used to it.’

  Harry Walker stood in front of him on the pavement, barring Matt’s way forward, recording every word on his smartphone.

  ‘Ever heard of the freedom of the press? Or won’t that count for anything when you Trots take over?’

  ‘Let me go through, Harry. It’s been a long day for both of us.’

  ‘I want an apology first. You questioned my professional integrity. Or are you feeling too depressed – ’

  Matt knew he shouldn’t, but this had been building inside him for months, even years. The tabloids had had everything their own way for too long.

  He gripped Walker’s shoulder with one hand and kneed him in the stomach. While Walker was bent over and gasping for breath, Matt then punched him squarely in the face with a straight uppercut, which landed on the side of his nose. To Matt’s surprise, as he turned away and wiped his hands on his trousers, above the clicking of the cameras he heard the rest of the press pack give a loud cheer.

  Sam bundled him into the waiting car.

  ‘People like you shouldn’t be allowed out in public,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t exactly the ideal image for a future statesman. We’d better get you home before you decide to clobber someone else.’

  She slipped her hand in his as they sat together on the back seat. He settled down to watch the fleeting images of the sleeping city through the car window – the tacky neon lights above the all-night shops, the forbidding façade of the Bank of England, solid and indomitable St Paul’s, the refuse collectors and the huddled homeless, unsteady late-night revellers, fading imperial buildings, and the lights still on in Whitehall offices for civil servants working into the small hours, juggling to stave off the multiple crises. Matt had no regrets. The clock was ticking and the world was closing in on him. He wondered what he had unleashed and where it would all end.

  PART 4 – CLIMBING BACK

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  With just over a week to go, there was no doubt that Matt’s message had got through. The touch-paper had been lit. In the days that followed his dramatic midnight appeal, a new mood – wild and euphoric, but brittle too, swept through most of England. At rally after rally, on the airwaves and on social media, around the kitchen table and in the pub, people made clear their determination to defend the country and defeat the nationalists.

  Moved beyond words, Matt had never experienced anything remotely like it. He had touched a nerve and released a burst of energy and hope on a scale that caught everyone by surprise. He marvelled at the sight of the massive crowds wherever he went. He had always known that the English people possessed a deep reserve of courage and decency that had been stifled for too long by those in power. Yet he had never imagined such an outpouring of passion and anger.

  With each day that passed, SOCA inched up in the polls. The Alliance welcomed a hundred thousand new members in two days. The Tufton Street phones were permanently jammed and the SOCA website temporarily crashed. It seemed they could do nothing wrong.

  ‘There’s a Justin Fishbourne on the line,’ said Sam one morning. ‘He’s tried to reach you several times. He wants to make a large donation. Shall I say we accept?’

  ‘Tell him to pay back what he owes his company pension fund first. Then if he crawls naked down Whitehall, I might consider his offer.’

  The three of them met for a lunchtime strategy session in Sam’s favourite Indian restaurant across the road.

  ‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ said Rob. ‘It could all change from one day to another. And you know what they say comes after pride …’

  ‘I understand how fragile it all is,’ said Matt. ‘We’ve got to keep up this momentum until election day. If we show any sign of weakness or complacency, or our support starts to drop, they’ll attack us even more brutally than before. We mustn’t let up for a second.’

  Looking affectionately at his two comrades, he banged his fist on the table.

  ‘Stay strong,’ he said. ‘Enjoy the week ahead, and drink in the enormity of what’s happening around us. We’ll never live another moment like it. This is our time – although the prize is so much more important than you and me, or Crouch, or any bunch of politicians. History’s on the march, and we happen to find ourselves caught right in the middle, at the precise moment of truth. We can’t afford to screw up.’

  They each had the same niggling concern at the back of their minds.

  ‘What’s happened to Crouch?’ asked Sam. ‘We haven’t heard a word from him or his camp since Matt went on TV. Apparently he’s been spotted a few times on the streets in West Thameside, campaigning, but they’ve cancelled his daily press conferences. He hasn’t been seen outside the constituency for several days. He must be biding his time, but for what?’

  ‘He’s a puffed-up dictator, but he’s not stupid,’ said Rob. ‘He must realise the country’s turning against him. Perhaps he’s trying to organise a dignified departure.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Sam. ‘He’s up to something. Anyway, he doesn’t deserve to be treated with dignity aft
er all he’s done. I know we’re supposed to be magnanimous in victory and all that, but we can’t let Crouch escape without making him pay for his crimes. Our people would never forgive us if we just let him quietly retire without punishment. He and his supporters deserve no pity, no mercy. What they did – first ruining the country for their personal gain, and then causing the deaths of hundreds of innocent people - can never be forgiven. They’ve never shown any flicker of concern for their fellow-citizens. Crouch should be treated like a war criminal.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Rob. ‘It’s not the French revolution – we’re not going around chopping off people’s heads. Let’s focus on what we’ve got to do now, rather than taking revenge later.’

  ‘Why do you always defend Crouch?’ Sam threw back at him.

  This was getting out of hand. Matt felt he had to shut them up before the argument escalated.

  ‘Stop quarrelling like an old couple,’ he said.

  They both looked at him dumbfounded, and then the three of them burst into laughter.

  ‘Perhaps not the ideal choice of words in the circumstances,’ said Matt.

  The brief moment of tension had been defused, even if accidentally. Matt wasn’t unduly worried. Anger and revenge were rarely good counsellors, but they were playing for high stakes, and a degree of nervousness before the last big offensive was understandable. He knew that many of their supporters shared Sam’s opinion about Crouch, and her directness was an essential part of the mix between the two of them. If it were confession time, he would even say that Sam’s strong views neatly balanced out his own tendency to overcomplicate life and endlessly sit on the fence. He needed her beside him. She was right that they would have to decide what to do with Crouch. It was just that first, they had to win the election, and then they had to take power and form a government. Once in office, he would do whatever needed to be done, within the law.

  His thoughts were moving elsewhere, and his vision of where his duty lay was changing. In talking to the press, and even with Sam and Rob, he was careful never to sound complacent. In his own heart of hearts, he felt that surely nothing could stop them now. Even as someone who prided himself in being rational and measured, it was hard not to feel buoyed up by the adulation, and further exhilarated by the sweet smell of revenge.

  It was time to start preparing for his first days in power and forming his team in Downing Street. He blinked at the thought of walking through that door. It wouldn’t be easy to transform SOCA, which up to now had essentially been a loose alliance of disparate voices of protest, into a cohesive force for governing the country. He would have to strike the right balance in his choice of cabinet ministers, and insist on discipline and total loyalty from the outset. The full implications of what it meant to wield power, and the crushing burden of responsibility, were beginning to sink in.

  The outline of a new and harder mindset started to take shape in his head. There would undoubtedly be difficult decisions ahead, which no one else could take but him, and him alone. One of his principal missions would be to restore justice. If that meant making the guilty pay a heavy price, he would do his duty in the national interest without any hesitation. Truth and reconciliation, if necessary, could come later.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Several hours later, towards the end of the afternoon, Rob brought him back down to earth.

  His interviews over for the day, Matt was sitting at his desk in the Tufton Street office, flicking through the sports pages in the evening paper. Despite it being the middle of the cricket season, the main story claimed that even football was now being affected by the national crisis, and the sense that an era was coming to an end. ‘The glory days of easy money and lax tax regimes for sheikhs and oligarchs will soon be over’, the article read. SOCA had promised new legislation to change the structure of club ownership, place a cap on transfer fees and ‘return the clubs to the fans’. The richer Premier League clubs, usually so careful not to express political preferences, were distancing themselves from the ENP. Invitations had been cancelled, favours denied, requests for photo calls with players refused. Ripping off fans in Newcastle and Manchester while floating the club on the New York stock exchange was about to get a whole lot harder, if the polls were right.

  About time too, thought Matt. Football was yet another area of national life in desperate need of reform and an injection of fairness and common sense rather than dirty money. The piece in the paper was further confirmation that the policies in SOCA’s manifesto accurately reflected public concern.

  As Matt folded the paper, he saw Rob bearing down on him, looking miserable as usual.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve discovered one exception to the national trend,’ said Rob, drawing up a chair.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘West Thameside.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘We should have seen it coming. It’s like Custer’s last stand – they’re throwing everything at it. We were level pegging last week, but today Crouch has moved three points ahead of you. Now we know why he’s been keeping quiet – he’s been focussing on his re-election.’

  ‘Don’t let’s get too excited,’ said Matt. ‘There’s often a wobble in the polls over the last couple of weeks.’

  Rob looked exasperated.

  ‘And elections are often lost because the candidate gets complacent,’ he replied. ‘You need to stop swanning around the TV studios and spend more time in the constituency. Get out on the doorstep, connect with people. Ramp up the campaign and take a few risks. Otherwise SOCA might win a historic victory, but you’ll be on the outside looking in. We can’t allow that to happen. I haven’t given up six months of my life to end up on the losing side.’

  So that was Rob’s problem – nothing to do with loyalty to the cause, more the idea that the result might prove he had made the wrong choice. He was as hard to pin down as ever. Matt reluctantly decided he had better humour him, to bring him back in the fold and make him feel loved.

  ‘I’ll make some space in the diary tomorrow and the next day to spend more time in the constituency. I don’t share your pessimism - you’re getting things out of proportion. Crouch’s credibility is draining away. We’ve got an excellent set of policies and moreover they’re all costed. The people see us as responsible and on their side. We’ve got to keep our nerve.’

  Rob drew his chair closer to Matt’s desk.

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you? Let me give you a quick lesson on the facts of life.’

  Matt wondered what was behind all this agitation – it wasn’t in Rob’s character.

  ‘We’ve got one week to go. One week. It’s now or never. If we don’t get you elected, all the work we’ve put in over the past year will mean nothing. I know what you’re going to say – it’s not just about you, it’s about transforming the whole country, your usual spiel. For you to become prime minister, you have to be elected in West Thameside. At the moment, your chances don’t look good. To be safe, we need to find another three thousand votes. That means we’ll have to start taking a few risks. We might even have to get our hands a little bit dirty from time to time.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Matt, ‘as long as we don’t compromise our principles and our policies.’

  Rob blow out noisily through his lips and shook his head.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder why I bother - we should have had this conversation months ago. You have to get it in your head that politics isn’t all about la-di-da speeches and fine-sounding principles – if you want to get elected, you have to cover the grubby side too. You don’t win elections just by receiving the highest number of votes – it’s also about organisation behind the scenes. That’s the way it’s always worked.’

  ‘That may be the way you do things in the unions, but I believe in a different kind of politics -’

  ‘And let your opponent clear up those extra votes that are going begging? When people go into the ballot box, most of them don’t give a toss about policies and
principles. They vote for what they think’s in it for them.’

  This sounded a bit cynical, but Matt had to admit that Rob probably had a point.

  ‘What do you have in mind? What are our options for making up the difference – apart from my spending more time next week on the doorstep?’

  ‘Let’s start with postal votes. Nearly twenty per cent of voters vote by postal ballot nowadays, and the system’s completely out of control. Across the country, thousands of households are registered for multiple votes and so-called ghost voters – which means that people who’ve been dead for years or may have never existed go on receiving ballot papers. The result is that someone else fills them in and sends them back. That’s just one example - you wouldn’t believe what goes on. An official enquiry said recently that there were at least fourteen different ways in which postal ballots can be misused.’

  ‘But surely that couldn’t happen in West Thameside?’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Rob. ‘But don’t you worry. We’ve made sure James Crouch won’t be able to take advantage of the failings in the system. More to the point, we ought to do quite well ourselves.’

  Matt bristled - this was completely unacceptable. How could Rob have imagined that Matt would stand by and let him break the law?

  ‘There’s no way I’m going to let you deliberately commit fraud on my behalf,’ said Matt. ‘I thoroughly disapprove of these methods.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Rob. ‘But you want to get elected, don’t you? So you can change the country for the better?’

  Matt couldn’t deny it.

  ‘Politics is a rough old business. For every good deed done, there’s always a price to be paid.’

  ‘I’m not prepared –’

  ‘Hear me out. All sorts of things go on behind the scenes – trade-offs and paybacks, blackmail and bribery - that nobody ever hears about. We cling on to the fallacy that democracy still works, while under the surface, money is constantly changing hands to buy votes and people are forever knifing each other in the back. It’s a mug’s game really – the only thing that’s certain is you can’t trust anybody. There’s no point in getting steamed up. The deadline for postal votes has already passed – the votes are in and there’s nothing you can do about it.’