Vote at Toad Hall
Page 25
So, Foxy Vulpine, you thought you could get one over on me did you? Well, just you wait and see my counter move…
Chapter Thirty-Two
The morning after the result came in the streets looked like the terraces at the end of a Cup Final. I have never seen folks so bothered about the outcome of a Vote before. It was almost like a new religion to many of them.
Jubilant Leave voters were openly celebrating their freedom from the LEAF League and all the nasty things they blamed it for. Meanwhile, Remain voters huddled in dazed groups, like bereaved families, wondering exactly how they had let the most winnable Vote in memory slip through their paws.
The Result was close. When you looked at the chart for ‘Leave’, ‘Remain’ and ‘Don’t Know’ you had to look pretty carefully to see that ‘Leave’ was the biggest of the three.
But it was.
Indisputably.
Phrases like ‘the Will of the Animals’ and ‘the largest Democratic exercise in History’ featured heavily in a lot of the online reports. I remember wondering exactly how many of those reports owed their popularity, or even their very existence, to Vulpine’s basement Army of media manipulators. Fair play to him, though. There is nothing stopping anyone else doing what he does. Currently, he just seems to be the best at it.
And of course, I can’t tell you about any of that, because I was apparently enjoying a bus-top tourist trip through the city all afternoon when I definitely wasn’t President Vulpine’s special guest.
In the months that followed the Vote, many at Toad Hall were reluctant to hurry up the paperwork on taking Wild Wood out of the LEAF League, at least until there was a solid plan in place for keeping Wild Wood financially afloat afterwards.
Tarquin Toad the Third retired to his caravan, as planned, the day after the Result came in. Despite Mel’s visit he had done nothing to prepare our national coffers for the lean years ahead. A rumour went around that he had even spent his last day as Prime Minister sorting his family finances out, and had made himself a handsome profit when the Result was announced and Wild Wood wobbled. I haven’t seen the evidence for that, but I have noticed quite a few Toads quietly squirreling their investments away, shifting funds out of Wild Wood and expanding their portfolios of Tiger stock.
After a season of political wrangling Weasel has started to pop up all over the place again, demanding Toad Hall hurries things along. He’s made a point of harking back to when Wild Wood succeeded in the Second Orchid War: ‘If we survived that onslaught from the Rats, we can survive leaving the LEAF League!’
His brand of selective nostalgia plays really well with his supporters. He definitely has a way with his troops. Of course, you can see he works a lot with Pincer these days too, if you follow him closely, so he’s probably getting some pretty heavyweight advice and assistance. Between those two and Vulpine it is a job to know how anyone ever gets to see any real news these days.
Which, I guess, is the only upside of this whole sorry tale for me. I chose not to write up my Vulpine meeting. How could I? He had me all ends up. But that afternoon in his overheated office did give me a sharper lens through which to watch the world. I publish what I see, and my following has grown ten times bigger in just over two months. I’m even getting to be so popular that I’m a target again, only this time it’s just Weasel’s supporters. They don’t worry me. When you have been an Enemy of the State and you’ve had one of Vulpine’s Foxes on your tail, a bit of online trolling is water off a duck’s back.
Some of my stories have done better than others. I blew Pincer’s digital project wide open. That was big news for a while. I wrote up all the links I could find between Weasel and Vulpine. I published what I had on Weasel and Stoat’s little foray into misusing personal data.
They all got me a much bigger following.
But what has really happened about all that shady stuff so far?
Diddly, that’s what.
And in the meantime, until the whole Vote thing gets sorted out nothing is getting done in Wild Wood. The whole place is grinding to a halt. There’s a lot of angry animals out there urging the Toads to get on with leaving the LEAF. But then, there’s even more animals imploring the Toads to stop and think about whether it really is a good idea. Tempers fray. Debates get shouted down.
It looks like President Vulpine really is, ultimately, the most cunning player in the Game after all.
None of us can say what the future holds, but my best guess is that when the dust settles we will all be hankering after the good old days before Toad called that Vote.
Anyway, until then you can find me here, in Chandler’s, rolling my eyes at the way things are turning out and feeling pretty powerless to do anything about it. If you ever feel the same, why not come on down? I’d be happy to share a table and we could put the world to rights.
Just remember, it takes a lot more than a reasonable argument to win the day.
OH, AND DUG, if you are reading this, it’s safe to come home now…