I, Maybot

by John Crace

  5 JUNE 2017

  The Supreme Leader had never been more clear about anything. The country was talking about one thing and one thing only. Brexit. So she had come to the same library in the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall where she had launched her leadership campaign almost a year earlier, to talk about Brexit. That’s what the public was demanding and that’s what the public would get.

  There were a few puzzled faces in the audience. They were under the impression that what most people had been talking about over the past couple of days was Saturday night’s terrorist attack in London and they had reasonably assumed that the Supreme Leader might have something to say about it. Apparently not. ‘More than ever, the country needs strong and stable leadership,’ she said. And that was why she was calling on everyone to strengthen her hand so her leadership could be even stronger and more stable. The Maybot was back up and running.

  Mistaking the groans of resignation and despair in the room for confirmation that her message of reassurance was getting through, the Supreme Leader went on to deliver much the same non-speech she had repeatedly given over the previous seven weeks. The same sentences that never quite made sense even on their own. Let alone when they were connected to all the others.

  She alone had a Brexit plan. A plan she couldn’t fully disclose, other than to say no deal was better than a bad deal. Jeremy Corbyn didn’t have a plan because his plan was different to hers. ‘We will show leadership, because that is what leaders do,’ the Maybot concluded, her algorithms no longer fully operational. ‘There is no time for learning on the job.’ This was the closest she came to saying anything heartfelt. She’d been trying and failing to learn on the job for 12 months.

  Only towards the end of her speech did the Supreme Leader make any proper mention of the London attacks. Enough was enough. She had done everything she possibly could to help the police in her six years as home secretary and it was just a pity they weren’t a bit more grateful.

  Under her strong and stable leadership, Britain had never been more safe. Even if it didn’t feel that way. No one cared more about the country’s security than she did. She just had her own idiosyncratic way of showing it. Instead of focusing on the terror plots that had succeeded, why couldn’t everyone just concentrate a bit more on the ones that had been thwarted? ‘I have the vision,’ the Maybot said. The blurred vision of an artificial intelligence without the intelligence.

  Much to her surprise, none of the questions that followed her speech were about Brexit. They were all about terrorism and security. The Supreme Leader was patience personified as she failed to answer any of them. Had she been wrong to cut police numbers?

  Not at all. The relentless focus on numbers was missing the point. What really mattered was that she had given the police extra superpowers. Some were being trained to have x-ray vision. Some were learning to fly with magic capes. Some could literally bi-locate and be in two places at the same time. Some had been equipped with little suckers on their feet that allowed them to walk up the side of buildings. Some had been given special weapons that fired spiderwebs. Some had also been given invisibility cloaks, which was why it was easy to imagine there were 20,000 fewer of them.

  An engineer hastily tried to update the Maybot, but only succeeded in making things worse as her faculties became ever more unreliable. Her voice recognition software couldn’t recognise the words ‘Donald Trump’ when she was twice asked if the US president had been wrong to criticise Sadiq Khan for doing a bad job. ‘The London mayor is doing a very good job,’ she monotoned. But what about Donald Trump? ‘The London mayor is doing a good job.’

  ‘What would Donald Trump have to say for you to disagree with him?’ one journalist finally asked. The Supreme Leader looked confused. Who was this Donald Trump? ‘The London mayor is doing a very good job,’ she said yet again. So would someone – the US president, say – who criticised Khan be wrong? ‘I suppose so,’ she muttered through gritted teeth. The special relationship had never appeared so pathetically and abjectly one-sided. But it was what now passed for strong and stable leadership.

  It had come down to this: vote Maybot, she’s a bit better than Corbyn

  7 JUNE 2017

  Things didn’t get off to the best of starts. The Supreme Leader had wanted to spend the last day of campaigning proving she was at least half alive, only to be largely ignored by everyone at the Southampton bowls club where she had dropped in for a morning cup of tea. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ the club captain told her. ‘It’s just that no one actually realised you were here.’

  Her next stop, in a windowless shed on a Norwich industrial estate, didn’t go a whole lot better. ‘I believe in Britain,’ she said in her trademark Maybot tone that suggested she believed in nothing whatsoever. Behind her, there wasn’t even a flicker of interest on the faces of the few dozen Tory activists who had been press-ganged in as extras. Just a studied resignation.

  ‘There are great things we can do together, you know,’ the Maybot continued. There was a pause as she tried to think of what they might be. Nada. Ah well. ‘Who has got the plan to get on with the plan?’ she continued, clearly hoping someone might remind her that it was meant to be her. They didn’t. Instead there was an awkward silence. The Supreme Leader then remembered she had a 12-point plan. Point one was to have a plan. Point two was that point one should be followed by point two. She didn’t get to point three.

  The Maybot went to her default settings. She doesn’t have any greatest hits so she has to settle for nighttime, middle-of-the-road filler on a local radio station. ‘Coalition of chaos. Jeremy Corbyn.’ The Labour leader’s name was followed by an elaborate grimace. One that was intended to be endearing and personable but merely made her look as if she was experiencing a terrifying power surge. After one of her software engineers had gone round the crowd with a cattle prod, there were eventually a couple of dry laughs.

  ‘One of the best things about this campaign is getting out and meeting people,’ the Supreme Leader concluded. It was just a shame the people couldn’t say the same thing about getting out and meeting her.

  Luckily there was never going to be any danger of her meeting any real people at her final rally of the campaign, at the conference centre next to Birmingham’s National Motorcycle Museum. Outside, the logo read: ‘Where legends live on.’ It should have added: ‘And where deadbeats go to die.’ The whole cabinet had been forced to make an appearance, many of whom may find themselves out of a job by Friday. Philip Hammond, Liz Truss, Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsom all performed gratuitous acts of self-harm by applauding their own imminent demise.

  Boris Johnson came on first. Arms waving, hair askew and with a profound sense of relief that he had some purpose in life after all. He may not be much good as foreign secretary but he makes a half-decent warm-up act. ‘Do we want Jeremy Corbyn to be the next prime minister?’ he said. ‘Nooo,’ everyone cried. The Tory campaign had come down to this. Vote for the Maybot. She may be rubbish, but she’s a bit better than Corbyn. ‘Please give a warm welcome for our wonderful prime minister.’

  It took a while for the Supreme Leader to realise Boris was talking about her, but eventually she bounced up onto the stage, followed by her husband, Philip. That little run seemed to use up all her battery reserves because she spent the next 15 minutes sucking all remaining energy out of the room. There was no sense of euphoria or inspiration. Just relief that the whole thing was coming to an end. Intermittently she would get arbitrary rounds of applause mid-sentence – no one really knew when they were supposed to clap – as she spoke with the same sense of despair as she had done for months. ‘We have the vision, we have the plan and we have the vision,’ she concluded. Though not the vision to know she had already had a vision.

  With one last call for everyone to vote on Thursday, the Supreme Leader made her final exit. Next time she had to speak in public, she would almost certainly be prime minister once more. Quite some achievement, she thought to herself. I
t’s not every politician who can win a general election by being so mediocre. God stand up for Maybots.

  * * *

  Over the course of the last two weeks of the election campaign, the polls had shown some signs that the gap between the Conservatives and Labour were narrowing. But nothing to suggest a major upset. Rather than forecasting an overall majority for Theresa May in excess of 100, most pollsters were predicting one of between 60 and 80 seats. Not quite as all-conquering as the prime minister had hoped for when she had called the election in April, but still respectable enough to vindicate her decision to do so.

  As is traditional on the day of an election, there was no campaigning allowed. Nor was there any political reporting in the media. So the leaders went back to their constituencies to await the results. It was the lull before the storm.

  * * *

  The Maybot asked us to strengthen her hand over Brexit – we declined

  9 JUNE 2017

  As the exit poll was announced on the stroke of 10 p.m., the opinion room at ITN went into a state of shock. Only a few stunned cheers from Labour supporters broke the silence. The script of the general election had been shredded.

  If the polls were anywhere near correct, the Supreme Leader had blown a 20-point lead in seven weeks and would end up with fewer seats than David Cameron in 2015. The Maybot had asked the country to strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations and the country had replied: ‘If it’s all the same with you, we don’t think we’ll bother.’

  Once the exit poll had been released, I made a beeline for Camilla Cavendish, who worked for Cameron in the No. 10 policy unit. Surely her old boss must be feeling a little bit of schadenfreude at the Maybot’s apparent demise? ‘Oh no,’ she said loyally. ‘He’s really not that type of person.’

  But one member of the ancien régime wasn’t quite so good at disguising their emotions. George Osborne was an ITV studio guest and there was a definite sparkle in his eye as the Tories were predicted to win 314 seats. But after the momentary sense of elation and vindication, there was a longer expression of barely concealed regret. If he hadn’t been quite so quick to abandon his career on the backbenches for the editorship of the Evening Standard, he might have been one of the frontrunners to take over the Conservative leadership within a matter of weeks.

  By now it was clear that no one really knew what they were talking about. Of all the outcomes that had been rehearsed, the possibility of a hung parliament never really featured. On the Google screen, the main subject trending was: ‘What happens next to Theresa May?’ It was a question that would go unanswered throughout the night. As would most others. The young people had turned out in large numbers and everything was up for grabs. The hard Brexit the Maybot had considered a done deal was now a distant memory. As were Angus Robertson and Nick Clegg.

  Ed Balls, another studio guest, appeared to be experiencing similar mixed emotions to Osborne. Ecstatic at the apparent Labour revival and gutted not to be at the centre of it. He had come prepared to write Jeremy Corbyn’s obituary and was having to ad lib tentative praise.

  But the longer the night went on, the more the personal disappointment dissipated. Tribal loyalties die hard and watching Tories suffer the hubris brought on by their own complacency was just too much fun. ‘It’s all a total mess,’ Balls said happily.

  It was hard to know which party was more caught on the hop, the Tories or Labour. Both sides were lost for words. Michael Gove was first to rally to the Conservative cause by pointing out that exit polls could be wrong and it was too early to rush to judgment. But he still looked as if he knew the game was up.

  Even if the Maybot were to squeeze over the line with a narrow majority, her authority would be destroyed. She would be a laughing stock in the country and the Tories would never forgive her. As Gove spoke, Lynton Crosby was quietly handing back his knighthood. No one would ever trust him to run a general election again. A red-eyed Liam Fox could barely remember his name. The studio manager passed him a tissue to wipe his tears and bundled him into a cab.

  Shortly after midnight, John McDonnell appeared, trying his best not to gloat. The shadow chancellor has never knowingly let a smile grace his mouth, but there were definite signs of pleasure.

  He too was insistent that it was still too soon to make any predictions. But it wasn’t quite. The one prediction everyone could safely make was that almost every polling company had got their sums wrong yet again. Labour was cleaning up in London and even winning seats in Scotland.

  The only person who seemed to be almost entirely unbothered by the turn of events was Stanley Johnson. ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ he said cheerfully. It was also possible that his son Boris was feeling much the same way.

  Speaking at his count at 3 a.m., Boris was at his most un-Boris like. No gags, just his best attempt at statesmanship. Even to the untrained eye it looked like a naked leadership bid. The Conservatives may be having a nightmare, but Boris wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity.

  Half an hour later, the Maybot turned up for her own count in Maidenhead. She looked straight ahead, trying not to catch anyone’s eye. Her speech spoke of stability but indicated the exact opposite. At best the Tories would be hanging on only with the support of the DUP.

  The Maybot had achieved what everyone had imagined impossible. She had inflicted more damage on the Tory party than anyone other than Tony Blair. Overnight the Supreme Leader had proved herself to be anything but supreme.

  The Maybot is trapped in the first phase of election grief – denial

  9 JUNE 2017

  No one could say they weren’t warned. The Supreme Leader had promised a coalition of chaos if she lost six seats and a coalition of chaos was what the country was getting. What she hadn’t made clear was that the coalition of chaos would be all hers.

  After a morning’s work of emergency repairs to her circuits, which had overloaded the night before, the Maybot was eventually in a fit state to meet the Queen shortly after 12 o’clock. Her husband Philip put her through her final tests. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I am the Supreme Leader,’ the Maybot replied, rather more confidently than she felt.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Strong and stable. Strong and stable’.

  There were still a few software adjustments to be made but they would have to wait, as the car had already been parked outside the front door of No. 10 for more than 20 minutes.

  The Maybot and Philip walked briskly to the car, refusing to acknowledge any of the reporters penned in on the other side of the road. They didn’t even acknowledge each other. There wasn’t anything much left to say.

  Well under half an hour later – considerably shorter than many people had expected – the Maybot returned from her audience with the Queen. It soon became clear why. Once she had got to the palace she had completely forgotten what it was she had come to say. She was trapped in the first stage of grief. Denial.

  There had been no election. She hadn’t blown a 20-point lead in the opinion polls in just over seven weeks. She hadn’t just run the worst campaign in living memory. She hadn’t published a manifesto that had needed to be pulped before the ink was dry. Everything was normal. Nothing had happened. She was still the Supreme Leader. All was well.

  The Maybot made her way slowly towards the wooden lectern set up outside the front door of No. 10. Her wheels often found it difficult to cope with uneven surfaces. A helicopter hovering overhead made it difficult to pick out the Supreme Leader’s words. No matter. She didn’t really have anything of interest to say.

  ‘I will now form a government,’ the Maybot murmured in a catatonic monotone. ‘A government that can provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this critical time for our country.’ Government. Certainty. Forward. Not the three words that were on anyone else’s tongue. It was as if she had been awoken from a seven-week cryogenic state and had decided to mix things up just for the hell of it.

  Being in government with … with … w
ith … She couldn’t remember the names of any of her cabinet colleagues. Probably because she had never taken the trouble to learn them. But whoever she had been in government with certainly didn’t warrant a mention. She was the Supreme Leader and they were just nothing. Strong and stable. Strong and stable.

  The Maybot dimly remembered something called Brexit. She had called for the country to strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations and the country had listened. By telling her to get rid of a couple of dozen of her own MPs – natural attrition, she reassured herself – and replace them with eight members of the Democratic Unionist party. That would show the EU who was boss. Brussels couldn’t fail to be impressed by a bunch of antigay, anti-abortion climate deniers. Which reminded her. Perhaps she ought to have a chat with the DUP about the new arrangements sometime. Not now, though.

  ‘Over the next five years,’ the Maybot continued, oblivious to the fact that many of her colleagues were giving her five days at most. Over the next five years. Or for ever. Whichever was longer. The Supreme Leader would be strong and stable. And Britain would reach the Promised Land.

  With her batteries running on empty, the Maybot spluttered to a halt. Philip stepped forward to push her back inside No. 10. Larry the cat was already on the phone to his therapist. Three owners in a year would play havoc with his abandonment issues. The staff at No. 10 burst into a spontaneous round of applause. It was fully deserved; never in British political history had a prime minister so spectacularly misjudged a post-election speech.

  * * *

  The disastrous election result immediately put Theresa May’s long-term future as prime minister in doubt. Much to the enjoyment of Labour supporters and some of her enemies in the Tory party. George Osborne, the former chancellor whom May had sacked on her first day as prime minister and was now editor of the Evening Standard, could hardly contain himself on The Andrew Marr Show. No one could remember the last time he looked quite so happy.