England Awokens

Publish and be damned

I’m a bit scared of posting this, but turning off paid subscriptions has made me a bit braver (or possibly more reckless).

I’ve mentioned once or twice that I was writing a dystopian satirical science fiction novel, England Awokens: The Day After the Revolution. The style I was going for was ‘Jonathan Swift, Douglas Adams, Philip K. Dick and the Monty Python team get drunk and write a novel together.’

I abandoned it about a third of the way through the first draft, around eighteen months ago. This was for several reasons: I had much less time to write with a baby on the way, and this Substack was more financially rewarding and, I thought, better-written than the novel, so it seemed a better use of my time to prioritise that. Plus, both politics and technology seemed to be changing faster than I could keep up with to remain topical.

I’m reluctant to post first-draft material that I don’t currently have plans to continue, and I have very mixed feelings about what I wrote, but, as I have so little time to write at the moment and I don’t want this Substack to go entirely silent, so I thought I would post an excerpt.

The section below depicts a meeting of the British Cabinet in the wake of the assassination of the Prime Minister (assassination and AI were both things that were not terribly topical when I wrote the storyline, but which became more topical during the writing — yes, this story was brewing for a long time before I started writing). In the context of the story, VRAI is the Virtual Reality Artificial Intelligence, a sort of immersive internet downloaded straight into your brain.

I would reiterate that I wrote this well over a year ago, long before recent shenanigans in Downing Street and Manchester!

---

Feelings Don’t Care About Your Facts

Much had altered in the way that England was governed over the centuries, but some things had not changed at all, despite the Mostly Peaceful Revolution. One of these things was the centring of the executive branch of government in a in a deceptively small-looking house with a black door and a white number ten painted on it, on a small road off Whitehall (or Blackhall, as it was now known) now officially known as Algonquian Street, although still referred to by most people at Downing Street.

In a surprisingly small room at the heart of this building, sat a nervous male-presenting. The room was in the Georgian style, painted a pale yellow, with several pillars that were probably ornamental. Chandeliers with electric light bulbs hung from the ceiling. A couple of bookcases stood at each end of the room, laden with old-fashioned, leather-bound books (a rare commodity since The Mostly Peaceful Revolution and The Great Cancellation) and there was a marble fireplace in the middle of one of the long walls, opposite the windows, but the room was dominated by a vast green baize-topped table, laid out with more than twenty seats, each with its own paper, pen and blotter – a quaint formality, as no one took hardcopy notes any more. It was called The Cabinet Safe Space (formerly The Cabinet Room) and it had been, so to speak, the heart of the heart of English government for centuries. Cabinet meetings were still held in meatspace because of the fear of hacking or bugging by foreign powers, terrorists, dissidents and sundry other Fascists. Plus, it stopped Cabinet ministers surreptitiously recording proceedings and re-editing them for their memoirs or to blackmail other ministers. The Cabinet began to file in, alone or in knots of two or three, usually in conversation, a succession of serious-looking people of varied races and genders, all dressed in dark suits, except for one male-presenting, who was wearing a bottle green suit, apparently for the Wear Green, Go Green environmental charity fundraising day. No one sat in the Prime Minister’s chair, but a pen, notepad and blotter had been laid there as silent memorial. They walked over to their chairs. Vijay thought that some looked grief-stricken, but not many. One or two seemed pensive. Some were clearly plotting the succession, but trying to look like they were just making small talk.

The big beasts of the Cabinet, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Pembroke; Home Secretary, Aisha Khalifa; Foreign Secretary, Guru Singh; and Minister for Islamophobia, Tariq Hussein, all entered alone, looking around, sizing up the room and their prospects, while trying to look like they were doing nothing of the sort.

However, the Deputy Prime Minister, Norman Sayers, looked as nerdy and weedy as ever behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He clearly knew that he had no chance of becoming Prime Minister or even being a kingmaker for other candidates.

The Cabinet Secretary, a sombre-looking man with a painstakingly inconspicuous face, like most senior civil servants, opened the meeting with the traditional land acknowledgement.

“We acknowledge, recognise and honour the Catuvellauni, whose stolen land we are meeting upon, at the start of this meeting. We are humbled by the knowledge that we are settler-colonialists who need to check our privilege, listen hard to oppressed voices and do better. Only by acknowledging this can we move forward as strong allies to the Celts and all other colonised peoples in England.”

“As I say each meeting, the Celts were settler-colonialists too. We should be acknowledging the Bell-Beaker People as the true indigenous inhabitants of this whole archipelago.” The speaker was Tariq Hussein, the Minister for Islamophobia.

“You and your fucking Beaker People every time,” someone muttered, but no one would admit to noticing who and the meeting moved on.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Pembroke, spoke next. He was a fat man, usually looking jolly. Prime Ministers often appoint a fat, jolly-seeming Chancellor, to try to make the tax hikes and spending cuts seem a little less miserable. Theresa May had a tall, thin, miserable, cadaverous Chancellor who looked like an undertaker out of Dickens – big mistake. Or maybe the fat men were just to make the Prime Minister look thin in Cabinet photos. Never under-estimate the vanity of a politician.

“I think before we start, we should hold a minute’s silence in memory of the late Prime Minister,” he said.

There was a murmur of approval and all present folded their hands, stared at their blotters and spent a whole minute thinking about the Prime Minister, their next meeting, their mistresses or what was for lunch.

After a minute, they looked up. Before anyone could speak, the Chancellor stepped in again. He was not officially in the chair, but seemed to be making a play for it.

“The first item on the agenda is the assassination of the late Prime Minister.” He realised the Cabinet Secretary was glaring at him, met his gaze with an easy smile and carried on speaking.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that Johnnie Bull is the culprit.”

“Chancellor of the Exchequer, it is totally inappropriate to start this kind of speculation! I think this meeting should have had a trigger warning. It’s not appropriate to just launch into this discussion. Someone might get triggered. PTSD is an invisible disability,” said Aisha Khan.

There were murmurs of approval from around the table.

“I also think that we need to be very clear that this has nothing to do with Islam. We need a total crackdown on Islamophobic conspiracy theorists who are prepared to blame everything bad in the world on the ummah. It’s outrageous that, any time there’s any violence, the Muslims get blamed. When it’s far more likely to be a certain other ethno-religious group, mentioning no names.” This was the Tariq again.

“Quite right, Minister for Islamophobia,” said Nigel, taking control again. “We’ll have a crackdown on Jews living out of the ghetto. We can pull in a bunch of Fascists as well, no harm in that, eh, Minister for Islamophobia?”

“Indeed not, Prime Minister, I mean, Chancellor of the Exchequer.” No one smirked at the outrageous toadying – at least, not outwardly. The Chancellor, however, beamed like the cat who had just taxed 97% of the cream.

“I don’t think we should dismiss the Islamist threat so easily, Chancellor of the Exchequer.” This was from Taylor Rouse, a middle-aged woman with bright green hair who was Secretary of State for Green Energy. “The Islamists are vocally opposed to all Pride and gender-affirming activities.”

Before she could finish her statement, her voice was drowned out by many other ministers.

“No Muslim would do such a terrible thing. And if they did, it would be virtuous resistance in response to England’s historic imperialism and Islamophobia, such as the illegal Balfour Declaration, which sparked over a century of colonial oppression of our great friends the Palestinians.” Nigel again, trying to keep the support of the majority at the table.

“Quite right,” said Tariq. “Remember Palestine,” he added, ominously.

“I didn’t mean to criticise Palestine,” said Taylor. “Palestine will be triumphant! She will rise –” She broke off, interrupted.

“Palestine isn’t a woman! You misgendered Palestine!” A surprise entry from Clarabel Devonshile, Secretary of State for Culture Wars, Media and Sport, a thin, young, female-presenting (in fact, the youngest minister present) with a posh accent and a more expensive education than the rest of the Cabinet put together. “The idea that countries are automatically women is the type of outdated, retrograde, misogynistic, transphobic, imperialist nonsense that should have been abolished years ago.”

“Maybe the PM was killed by a TERF,” suggested the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Ibrahaim Ali, who was feeling peeved that he hadn’t had a chance to speak yet.

At the mention of the dreaded word TERF, the assembled Cabinet mimed throwing salt over their right shoulder as per standard superstition.

“Folkz, let’s calm down,” said Nigel. “I think we can all agree that Jews, Zios, what-have-you are the most likely and certainly the most useful potential assassins for the PM. The late PM. The late, beloved, PM. Home Secretary, maybe you could nudge Special Branch in that direction? Lovely. Now, the first thing we need to do is choose a new PM.”

Twenty-two pairs of eyes narrowed and focused on the Nigel, suspiciously.

“I think we should leave the Prime Minister’s successor to a vote among the Party, as per procedure,” said Taylor.

“In ordinary circumstances, I would agree,” said Nigel. “But these aren’t ordinary circumstances. The ship of state must not be seen to stumble at the first sign of danger or else we could all be marching to the front without a rudder.” He showed no sign of spotting the mixed metaphors, but several Cabinet members winced, then tried to look unperturbed.

“In short, we must pick a new PM pronto.” He looked around expectantly.

“It is certainly time for a Muslim PM,” said Tariq, pointedly.

“How about another woman?” said Taylor.

“Not a white woman,” said Tariq, hurriedly.

“The New Outlook requires discussion of the intersections of oppression: gender, race, age, species and religion. The late PM was an African-English male-presenting atheist of Christian ancestry. We have already had plenty of white women. I propose an Asian Muslim woman,” said Aisha.

“You mean, you propose yourself, being the only Asian Muslim woman here,” said Nigel.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Aisha, brazenly.

“I think she’s talking sense,” said Ibrahim, who knew he was too lowly and too clumsy a political operator to be able to put his own name forward. The best alternative was to pick a likely candidate and suck up to them in the hope of getting a plum job in the next Cabinet.

“What if we discuss some policy issues,” said Nigel, trying to wrest back control of the spotlight and find a way to inveigle himself back into the running. “Say, slavery reparations. Reparations were made to African-Englishpeople soon after The Mostly Peaceful Revolution, but what about former colonies?”

“I’ve long felt that we should send money to former colonies that suffered from slavery, such as those in the Caribbean,” said Tariq.

“I’ve long felt we should send white people out as slaves for labour on public works. Build roads and train lines and things. Quid pro quo. Anything else would be unfeeling to the formerly colonised peoples.” said Aisha.

“Who would you send?”

“Working-class white people, obviously. Middle class people are far too valuable to the economy and they’re loyal Party supporters too. Working class white people are lazy and racist, too easily swayed by populists and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Frankly, we’re better off without them.”

“What about some Party members, to show that we are willing to make sacrifices?” asked Nigel, stirring things up.

“Failed Cabinet ministers. Pour encourager les autres,” said Aisha decisively.

“What if an African-English minister screws up. Would you really send a black minister into slavery in the Caribbean?” Tariq, stirring things even more.

“African-English ministers don’t screw things up, like women, gays and trans ministers. And Muslim ministers. It would be the worst sort of racist populism to suggest they do and frankly you want to ask yourself why you just asked that.”

Tariq said nothing, but smiled. She definitely had potential.

“Would anyone qualify for removal under those criteria? I’m one quarter Sioux,” said Nigel, improbably.

“I’m one eighth Māori,” said Sally Orwell, speaking up for the first time.

“I’m one fifteenth Vietnamese,” said Taylor. She realised everyone was staring at her. “We’re a very close family,” she finished, embarrassed.

The improbability of actually sending any failed ministers into slavery seemed clear, which cheered everyone up. It was like the introduction of racial quotas in universities some decades previously; once you realised that most people had some kind of ethnic minority ancestry, if you went back far enough, the whole situation became beautifully malleable, from a political point of view.

“What about racist embryos?” asked Taylor, trying to change the subject.

“Abort them,” said Nigel.

“Impractical,” said Aisha. “All white embryos are conceived in an environment of white supremacy and so are inherently racist. We sadly can’t abort all of them. Aborting five million embryos a year would break the NHS. The only option is to educate them into anti-racism from their mothers’ – and fathers’ – milk, literally. We’re already funding research into psychotropic additives that we can put in milk to make babies more susceptible to anti-racist brain training techniques. We need to stick with that kind of progressive thinking.”

“What does the Home Secretary think about transracialism?” asked Ibrahim. By this stage, there was no pretence that anyone else was in the running.

“Fake-racials, as I refer to them. Race is fixed and unchangeable, scientifically-speaking. It’s not like gender. Frankly, fake-racials are just undercover Fascists stirring up trouble and I’ve always said as much. They are constantly micro-aggressing and hurting the feelings of real BIPOC. It’s unacceptable. We need to keep it illegal, regardless of what some Fascist agitators say. Anything else would be ignoring the feelings of BIPOC and legitimate mixed-racials.”

“What about species dysphorics?” asked Nigel. There was a little gasp from someone. Nigel knew that, unlike previous topics, this was a source of deep division within The Party and the community of the faithful generally. He was making a last play for the premiership himself.

There was a moment of silence as Aisha drew a deep breath.

“Species dysphorics have “insistent, persistent, consistent” feelings dysphoria. They should be allowed to amend their birth certificates to change their species. Anything else would be unfeeling. And if pet owners complain that some cats and dogs can vote and others can’t, we extend the furry franchise to pets who can write a cross on a ballot paper. We can’t be unfeeling. I’ll take a chance on trained monkeys voting.”

The Cabinet collectively exhaled. She certainly had balls (not literally, but there would be nothing wrong if she did). She was willing to take a difficult stance on the most pressing issue of the day. However, there was still a chance of a split in The Party.

“What would you say to Party members who didn’t accept this,” asked Norman, speaking for the first time in the meeting. He had no chance of becoming Prime Minister, so perhaps it was a legitimate question aimed at gauging the chance of factionalism.

“I would say that we are a party committed to discussion of many viewpoints and also that the facts of zoological science don’t care about their speciesist feelings.”

“What are your policies on gender?” asked Sally, guiding the conversation to less dangerous topics, perhaps fearful of a split in the Cabinet itself.

“I would introduce much stricter punishment for the use of objectifying language in VRAI that reduces people to biological functions. I would also ensure that all official forms use correct terminology for people who menstruate, people who used to menstruate, people with penises, people with penises who menstruate, enbies, intersex, pan-gender, pre-gender, post-gender, and so on. Some are still using the brutally reductionist and patriarchal ‘Male’ and ‘Female.’ There is no excuse for that in this day and age. We also need to fund more genetic research into full transition at a chromosomal level, which will hopefully lead to many more children and teenagers transitioning. As trans people have always been a crucial part of our political support, this is more important than ever.”

“What are your views on social security and pensions?” said Tim Browing, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

“We need to invest in children, because they’re our future. Unlike the elderly, who are the past,” replied Aisha, definitively. “So, it’s totally OK to tax them and then euthanise them when they haven’t got anything left to give. To give back, I mean. To society.”

“What about the representation of left-handed people in the media?” asked Sally.

“I support full representation for everyone. Every novel, film, play or TV show should be precisely in line with the latest census information, adjusted to reduce the regrettable over-representation of cis, straight and white characters in meatspace, of course.”

“What about economic policy?” asked Abubakar Oneyma, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, thinking about his own niche topic again, as he did in almost every Cabinet meeting, instead of taking the Big Picture of The New Outlook and focusing on important issues that affect everyone, such as race, gender and sexuality.

“Not terribly relevant to the job of a modern government. If we need to raise taxes without criticism, we can just get some friendly influencers to post about the need to pay more taxes.”

“Is there a legal right not to have someone yuk your yum?” Nigel was being facetious now, just registering his discontent at the way things were going.

“Yes, and a legal protection against someone shitting on your squee. Be serious, Nigel,” said Aisha sarcastically, pointedly using his name instead of his title as per protocol.

By this stage, it was clear that Aisha was to be the new Prime Minister. Between being black, female-presenting and Muslim, she had too many diversity points to be beaten by Nigel, however much he redwashed his white privilege with left-wing politics, plus she was a much cannier political operator. There was no announcement to the Cabinet. There never is in an oligarchy. It is just assumed that, if you matter, you know and if you don’t know, you don’t matter.

“Right, let’s get to the next item on the agenda,” said Aisha briskly. “Since VRAI went online about forty years ago, people have ossified intellectually. VRAI has been a perpetual outrage generator, keeping ordinary proles involved with politics at only the most mindless level of giving loves to blue tick politicians and hates to thought criminals to get the appropriate feels. It’s like we have created a generation of factory-fed sheep, mindlessly grazing and awaiting the slaughter. But there is a downside to this too. In theory, someone could use VRAI to whip up revolution against us. Unlikely, but possible. However, some tech geeks at a government lab have come up with something that might help bring VRAI under unified control. They say –” Aisha broke off as the lights went out, dim emergency lighting kicking in flawlessly after only five seconds of everyone sitting in the dark. Government buildings secretly ran on fossil fuels, but, to maintain appearances with the public, it was still necessary to have carefully timed power failures from time to time to simulate renewable energy sources. Obviously, in the panic after the Prime Minister’s assassination, no one had thought to change the timing of this power cut.

“Oh, well, we’ll have to stop there for now. Meeting adjourned, everyone. Fuck the Tories.”

“Fuck the Tories,” everyone echoed blandly, the ancient way of bringing a Cabinet meeting to a close. People began to gather papers and stand up, little pockets of conversation breaking out. Already, they would be politicking, manoeuvring for position within the soon-to-be-reformed Cabinet. Already they would be bitching about Aisha and gossiping about whether Nigel would be paid off with a plum job, put out to pasture where he might be a nuisance or even dealt with more drastically.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my Substack for more posts like it.

If you would like to support my writing, please consider “buying me a book” (or part of one) at this link. https://buymeacoffee.com/danielgsaunders

Thanks!