Cabbages & Kings: An Open Letter to Theresa May

“Her beauty made her
Her inclinations swayed her
Her anxieties delayed her
Her fantasies betrayed her….”
— From Gully Gully Mein Shor by Bachchoo

Dear Theresa,
Now that your gamble on calling an election has failed and your advisers Timothy and Fiona have slunk away into deserved oblivion, I am writing to offer my services. Please read this as an application from one who is not part of the Westminster Elite, has never advised a politician (though I was once asked by a mutual friend to write election speeches for someone called Vijay Mallya) and has a longing for a fat salary and an office in Downing Street. The quality of the advice that follows is yours to judge. Having convinced you of my suitability for the job you will dispose of the two Tory MP placemen you have appointed as advisers and send a prime ministerial limo to my address in London to appoint me straightaway. You need me as badly as a feminist needs a bicycle — or whatever the metaphor was.

First things: never use the sort of long sentences I have used above. Think of the spectacular, unexpected triumph of Jeremy Corbyn in this election. He used just three words “For the Many, not the Few” (okay, five !) and converted doubters. You got stuck with “Strong and Stable, me, me, me, me, me, me, me...” Lots of “me” words. When David resigned and you opportunistically became a strong Brexiter, you stood outside 10 Downing Street and said you were for compassionate conservatism and gave me the impression that you would make the lame walk and the blind see. Good stuff. But then you started talking Tory nonsense — reinstate grammar schools, impose punitive taxes on people driving white vans, size up and seize the houses of the old, feeble and demented as soon as they died, refuse to do anything about the crooks who do billions of pounds worth of business in Britain but dodge its taxes... I could go on, but you know the stuff you came up with. People noticed. It tore away the veil of one-nation-conservatism and revealed beneath it the same old naked Nasty Party again.

“For the Few, not the Many” is what your advisers seemed to have induced you to go for, specially in the election the ultimate fewness — yourself!. Brits don’t like braggarts and egotists — which is of course why they didn’t elect Donald Trump (that was another country you fool! — Ed; Yes, yes, sorry yaar, got carried away — fd). We know that an Australian called Lynton Crosby and his computer were hired to help you win the election. He made all sorts of calculations about marginal seats and grabbing votes from strong Labour constituencies which voted for Brexit because they are basically racists — all of which, despite his algorithms, proved to be hopeless miscalculations. Probably on his advice you tried, not very subtly, to appeal to this racist, xenophobic mentality of some British voters by promising to reduce immigration to the “tens of thousands” — which could mean ten, twenty or ninety thousand a year. You were home secretary in charge of immigration for several years before becoming PM. In that capacity, you made this same promise repeatedly. You know that only half the immigration into Britain comes from the European Union and the rest from countries such as India, America and Australia, whose citizens don’t have an automatic right to enter the UK. So how seriously could the racists take your renewed promise when it goes with greater contact with the world outside the EU?

That aside, I have a question. I confess to having lots of Australian friends and don’t wish to say anything about their computing abilities, which may be among the best in the world, but one should ask why not hire a British expert instead of an immigrant? Or will skilled, though failed, immigrants be within your quota? Lynton is an electioneering expert but your Brexiteer ministers have repeatedly said that the era of “experts” is over and experts are not to be believed. So why expert Lynton? Isn’t it hypocritical to attack experts as useless and then employ one? And have the very vocal anti-experts such as Michael Gove, whom you’ve recently reappointed to your walking-on-water “Cabinet”, been proved right? Or are the experts who predicted that the economic growth of the UK would suffer as a result of the Brexit vote ultimately correct as the UK’s growth rate is this quarter the lowest in Europe? Even Bulgaria is doing better.

Jeremy made remarkable headway with the young vote by talking publicly to their idols. My advice is to go one further and take up Rapping yourself. Here are some sample lyrics you could try:
“Strong and Stable
The three-legged table
Soak the many
Take every Penny
Pile on the promises and the lies
Make Britain a tax-dodger’s paradise
Welcome to Lalit Modi and to Vijay
Buy up British properties, no tax to pay!”
(This won’t win her support, you idiot Ed; Form kills substance — fd)
Anyway, we both know that your precarious minority in the House of Commons has forced you to withdraw your determination to get a “hard Brexit”. As you talk to your own party and conduct secret negotiations with Labour, it seems that the deal you will try and negotiate with the EU is very, very close to being a member of it. My advice then would be to recommend to Parliament that you withdraw Article 50 and slide back into being a full member of the European Union. It will free you to get on with a desperately needed domestic agenda. I can lend you some cash to buy a copy of the Labour Party’s election manifesto. We (I am assuming that I am hired as chief adviser) can’t do better than adopt all its aims and policies! Nationalise British Rail!
Yours Ever,
Lord (?) Dhondy
(Chief Adviser to the UK’s temporary PM)