by M J Dees
“You’re allowed to dream, darling.”
“That’s all it is, a dream. We could have done with the money, you know. What, with the house and everything.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault, is it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t need to. I have dreams too, Jim.”
He sighed.
“I just hope we haven’t overstretched ourselves, what with the whole crisis thing at the moment, it’s impossible to get more credit.”
“It’s the bust boom cycle, I saw it on the stretch. You wait, the next boom is on its way and they’ll be begging us to take more credit.”
“Where did you see that? The fakeys?”
“Shut up.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Jim, picking up his own stretch. “I just keep reading about bankruptcies... crop failures... They say that’s why our insurance premium went up again last month. Those prices when they delivered the shopping today, unbelievable.”
“Is that why you keep turning the heating down?”
“We can’t afford the bills, Ma.”
“It’s freezing. So much for global warming. I don’t want Olivia to get pneumonia.”
“Don’t start.”
She didn’t start. She was too busy watching her stretch. So Jim started.
“We’ve got to pay the finance on the land on top of the rent for this place. Foreign investors have inflated the prices...”
“Really?” she interrupted. “I’d forgotten. It’s already been five minutes since you last told me. You sound like a nugget.”
“I just don’t see what’s wrong with this place.”
“You know I need to get out of the city.”
“Yes, your asthma, I know.”
“A place like that might not come up again. It’s perfect. We can build a house on the land,” she tore herself away from her stretch. “Everything will be okay, you’ll see.”
Jim didn’t see. He worried that trying to build the house might be the end of them. He could feel it coming.
“I should have taken that offer from Zhang.”
She said nothing.
The court case against Zhang was always on his mind. He could think of little else, and his writing had ground to a halt.
Wilks and Magennis, their cats, jumped onto the bed, signalling it was time for lights out.
Jim, laying in the darkness, wondered where all the time went. He felt overwhelmed by his daily routine and lamented his inability to find time to write. He felt worthless. His books weren’t selling, they disregarded him at work. This year the university had even fewer students, and he worried it might close altogether and he would lose his third job in three years.
On top of everything else, there was now a reactionary in charge of the government in Westminster. The electorate would have voted for a lamp post rather than Isaac Price and Jim felt the coalition, led by Roberts, was more of a disgrace with every week that passed. None of his peers seemed to say anything about it, everybody seemed to just try to keep their head down.
It was even worse now that Facebook had gone under. He had always complained about the social media giant and the fake news it propagated but at least fake news from all sides was circulating on the same platform but now each side had their own platform and were even less exposed to opinions which differed from their own.
Jim remembered that about a week after they had appointed Roberts as head of the coalition government, he and Annabel were at their new friends the Kumar’s with a colleague Wu who had launched into this big diatribe about why it was important to vote for Roberts to strengthen against the socialist scourge. Jim had got into an argument with him.
It was amazing to Jim that nobody seemed to see where all this was heading. That come the elections in March there was a genuine possibility that Roberts might hold the balance of power. It was all impossible to predict, but meanwhile the uncertainty affected everything, most of all Jim’s ability to borrow money to build that house that Annabel was obsessing about so much.
Their time at the allotment site had been rock bottom, and Jim thought at least he should feel grateful for what they had. It was not unreasonable for Annabel to want Olivia to grow up in a house in the country rather than a shed on an allotment site.
More worrying was the predictions from Robert’s coalition that there would be wholesale electoral fraud and that they might refuse to accept the result if it didn’t go their way. It was all too reminiscent of the forces that led to the re-election of Trump in ‘24. Almost as worrying as their phrase: ‘Vote for Unity or Vote for War.’
The election of Roberts as head of the coalition had been a spectacle. His name hadn’t even been in the running, but the conference couldn’t decide between the leader of the larger parties. Roberts wasn’t even at the conference, and the whole proceedings were being broadcast live on News 24.
They had already had nine ballots, and they had challenged all of them as unsatisfactory. At 3:18 am Roberts entered the arena and the entire crowd started chanting “Robby, Robby, Robby” for 30 minutes without interruption.
Roberts was quickly nominated as the head of the coalition and by 4:00 am the conference had ratified his appointment.
“No!” Jim had said out loud the next morning when he heard the news.
He watched the acceptance speech in horror. Price was apparently unconcerned by Roberts’s appointment. Perhaps he should have been more concerned than he was.
*
“You mustn’t tell Liam,” Emma Xu leaned over to confide in Jim in the university bar.
Jim looked over at Liam, her husband, and saw that he wasn’t listening. Jon and Jenny Lee engrossed him in conversation.
“You know Noah Johnson?” she continued.
“Yes, he’s an outstanding student.”
“I saw him wearing a Roberts T-shirt. If Liam knows, he’ll go after him or something.”
“Noah? A nugget? I can’t believe it.”
Liam was against Roberts, but then he was against most things. He also wanted to ban the Communist Party of Great Britain.
“A toast,” said Jon, raising his glass. “On this day, by tradition reserved for lovers, I would like to thank my mentor, Jim Smith, for helping me get through my training so I can now stand before you, a qualified and employed teacher. To Jim.”
“To Jim,” the gathering echoed, and everyone drank.
The group went back to their conversations, and Annabel must have noticed that Jim was looking a little glum because she sat with him.
“Do you know Asher Williams has had a stroke?” he said.
“No, when did that happen?”
“About two weeks ago, I visited him on the way home last week. I must have forgotten to mention it.”
He hadn’t forgotten to mention it. When he arrived home that evening, Annabel was obsessing about the new house as usual, so he didn’t bother saying anything.
“His mouth was twisted and hanging open,” he continued. “In his mid-40s. His father died young. It feels like death is all around us.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Bill’s wife had a heart attack.”
This news shocked Annabel.
“And Oliver Jones has a weak heart.”
“Don’t think about these things, darling. What about those paintings that Ava’s father showed us? Weren’t they beautiful?”
Jim was lost in his own thoughts.
“You know Roberts wants to do away with teacher training.”
“Let’s not talk politics tonight, darling. It’s Valentine’s Day.”
“They underestimate the power of Roberts’s party,” he gesticulated to Jon and Liam. “People believed what he said about Price courting Europe. They also believed it was foreigners who had the ear of Price to take us back into Europe, and they repressed the truth because of the foreign ownership of UK media. Most of the owners are American, not European. It’s the same with Price’s environmental poli
cies. He’s trying to bring us back in line with Europe, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the stretch.”
“Come on, have another drink. It must be the last one though, I only booked the babysitter till midnight.”
No sooner had the words left Annabel’s mouth than everybody’s stretches vibrated.
“What is it?” asked Jim, helping himself to another drink.
“There’s been a shooting,” said Annabel.
“Would you turn up the volume on the big stretch, please?” Jim asked the barman as he touched his stretch on the card reader.
The entire bar watched in silence, trying to comprehend what they were seeing on the news. Jim felt like it was one of those moments that they would talk about years later and everybody would remember where they were when they heard the news.
Two unidentified gunmen had somehow gained access to the public gallery of the commons and the lords and fired indiscriminately at the members. It was unclear, according to the reports, how many had been killed and how many were injured.
*
It was the eve of the election and Jim and Annabel, with presumably everyone else in the country, had tuned in to Roberts’ last speech of the campaign.
“And they never talk about the last virus, the immigrant virus. The unhinged left wing mob is trying to vandalise our history, desecrate our monuments, our beautiful monuments. Tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control,”
Roberts was in the middle of his speech by the time they turned on the stretch.
“We’re not conforming, that’s why we’re here, actually. This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion violates everything we hold dear as Britons. They want to demolish our heritage so they can impose their new oppressive regime in its place. When I campaigned to close the borders to protect us from the immigrant virus, Price opposed my decision and called it hysteria, xenophobia. He doesn’t know what the word means, xenophobia and fear-mongering. An emboldened left will launch a full scale assault on British life. You know that. They’ll expel anyone who disagrees with them. Look what happens when you disagree. You use a term that’s perfect and they’re not happy with it. They call you a racist. They call you a horrible person. They want to crush religious liberty.”
Roberts was almost spitting with fury. His years as a presenter on the big stretch had not gone to waste.
“They don’t want religion. They want to silence religious believers, indoctrinate your children with vicious lies about our country. They want to subsidise late term abortion and after birth execution. Price will stack the court with extremists, the forgotten men and women, together with everyone else. We’ll lose everything. They will put this hate filled, Britain bashing socialist, front and centre in deciding the fate of your family and deciding the fate of your country. No government, no safety, no police, no nothing. Just anarchy.”
The vast crowd met every statement with roars of approval. He looked straight into the camera.
“Price is now smearing as racist, tens of millions of people like yourselves. Decent, hardworking Britons who he’s never met. And he frankly probably doesn’t want to meet. Britain should not take lectures on racial justice from Price. Our country will be destroyed. We’ve all worked too hard. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Some do, but in a very sinister way. The push against our police will drive up crime and drive up costs at levels you’d never believe. Thousands of innocent lives will be lost. We will keep Britain out of foolish foreign wars. We will never hesitate to kill Britain’s terrorist enemies. Above all, we will never stop fighting for the sacred values that bind us together as one United Country.”
Here he had to pause because the roars of approval were deafening.
“We uphold the principle of equal justice under the law. We believe in the dignity of work and the sanctity of life. We believe we should teach our children to love our country, honour our history, and always salute our great flag. Proud citizens like you helped build this country, and together we are taking back our country. We are returning the power to you, the British people. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
The 21,000 strong crowd in the Manchester Arena went wild.
*
“What I was complaining about up to tonight has just been a mild prelude,” Jim complained as he watched the election results on his stretch. “It’s like 1930s Germany all over again but without the swastikas. Does anyone believe anyone other than Roberts orchestrated the Valentine’s massacre so he could declare his state of emergency?”
“It’s astounding how everything collapses,” Ben Kumar agreed. “What has happened to our country? To the unions? But, you know, the police have had the power to detain without charge for decades.”
“Yes, but they’ve never used those powers to arrest so many people before,” Elijah Brown chipped in. “And now Roberts has the Crown Prosecution Service in his pocket. There has been a wave of arrests of his opponents, claiming they were inciting violence. They are using these emergency powers to pretend they are defending democracy.”
“They only need section 5 of the Public Order Act,” said Jim. “Plus, they’ve been denaturalising people for decades, he’s just increased the pace. I was born outside the country, they could use it on me.”
“Only if they accuse you of terrorism.”
“Well, that’s hardly going to stop them.”
“They have deprived people, born and bred in Britain, of their citizenship and had their passports revoked without ever seeing the evidence against them, or having their cases against them heard by a court,” said Ben. “So I reckon we all should worry.”
Jim and Annabel had invited the Kumars and the Browns round for an election night party, not realising the results would be so depressing it would turn into a wake. At least Olivia had gone to sleep without protest.
“It’s worse than that,” said Ben. “They’re dissolving organisations who, according to them, have been involved in terrorism,. Suppressing sites they say promote terrorism, did you know the new legislation gives them power to overrule local government?”
“No?” said Annabel.
“What gets me though,” said Ben, only just pausing for breath. “Is the constant propaganda, it’s everywhere, it’s all over the stretch.”
“Did you see Roberts’ speech last night? Did you see how many nuggets went to see him? He was like some kind of evangelical preacher, claiming that he was cleaning the corrupt system. He’s appointed new law lords, they are all nuggets.”
“And that vlog by Father O’Loughlin, Social Justice, have you heard it? That man has some dangerous ideas.”
“But he’s very popular.”
“What’s that you’re wearing, Jim,” Ben asked.
“Oh, this? I wore it as a kind of joke,” Jim laughed. “It’s my service medal, thought I’d show my patriotism this way.”
“I forgot you were in the military,” said Ben.
“I thought we all were,” said Jim, and then wished he hadn’t, as Ben looked awkward.
“The nuggets, they’ll get their majority,” Elijah exclaimed. “They’ve almost doubled their vote.”
He showed the others his stretch, on which Roberts’s supporters, the nuggets, were singing the Unity anthem.
“They’ll replace the national anthem with that, given half the chance,” Ben complained. “And none of the media coverage seems really to criticise him.”
Then Roberts got up to deliver his victory speech.
“We had some sinful people, doing horrible things. But we will stop them. We will stop the radical left. We will build a future of safety and opportunity for all Britons. We are the party of liberty, equality, and justice for all.”
On their stretches, they could see the riots had already started, and that buildings were burning.
“Why doesn’t he condone the violence?” asked Jim.
“I saw they were arresting re
porters covering the riots,” said Ben. “There’s even footage of the police attacking camera operators. Of course, Roberts’ supporters say it’s faked.”
“He’s convinced people to give up their civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism.”
*
Jim tried to fill his plate as best as he could from the dismal-looking buffet. He looked around the canteen and saw Liam sitting on his own.
“Mind if I join you?” Jim asked, as he sat down opposite.
“Fill your boots.”
Liam looked down at his stretch. He looked miserable. It was not surprising given his political persuasions.
“You remember they said they would respect all sides of the political spectrum?” Liam began.
Jim nodded.
“They’ve just banned a left wing organisation for critical and disparaging remarks about the Government.”
“Really?”
Liam looked up from his stretch.
“Have you seen the flags going up all over the place?” he looked back at his stretch. “You wouldn’t believe the things they say are going on. People shot, buildings occupied, sites closed down. You know Lucas Davis?”
“The actor?”
“Yesterday, they removed him as creative director of the British Theatre Company by order of Unity. Not even the Government. Unity! And today, you won’t believe this, they’ve replaced the entire city council.”
“Is no-one opposing them?”
“Well, there are the riots but no-one in the establishment. It’s like all opposition has vanished from the face of the earth, disappeared, it’s staggering. But what do I know?”
“We were with some friends on Monday,” said Jim. “Nobody dares say anything. Everyone is afraid. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep my job here.”
Jim winced.
“What is it?” asked Liam.
“My arm. It hurts.”
Jim put down his cutlery.
“I’m so fed up, Liam. The pain, the politics, the finances, I can’t write anymore, can’t concentrate, and can’t work well.”
“I know how you feel,” said Liam. “But on a positive note, Roberts’ financial reforms will include one shareholder one vote.”
“I can’t believe it; he must have an ulterior motive.”