From the diary of Rishi Sunak, Britain’s most conciliatory prime minister
RELATIONS between Downing Street and Bute House have always been cordial, except when the phone rings late at night. ‘Is that the useless wee bastard?’ Nicola asks.
‘Sorry to hear of your resignation,’ I say, turning the conversation effortlessly from Trainspotting-era vernacular to statesmanship. ‘Had you been mulling it over long?’
‘It’s fuck all to do with you,’ she slurred. ‘The resignation. I’m not having a little shit like you chalk this up as a victory. What I’m most ashamed of is resigning with you in charge.
‘But before you it was the mad hen, before her Boris, and I can’t hang around my whole career waiting for a Tory who isn’t an arsehole. The music stopped on you.’
The wise fighter, I learned from Dom Raab’s karate lessons before he discontinued them and kept the money, pays attention to what his opponent is not doing. What was my Scotch counterpart avoiding saying? That I could turn Scotland Tory?
‘So it’s over,’ I said, not unkindly but with an air of finality. ‘For you, for independence, for the whole devolution project. There are 59 seats up for grabs, and I believe that under my leadership the Conservatives can contest every single one of them.’
This, perhaps, goes too far. She can’t answer. All I hear is sobbing, mixed with shrieking. My steely edge can be upsetting. Until she comes back on the line, and I realise it was laughter.
‘You?’ Nicola says. ‘Win seats? Up here? You daft fucking weapon.
‘Flying in like a golf twat on your private jet to walk round a fishery? Raising our taxes and stealing our oil? Scotland would sooner vote for Edward Longshanks than your set of cunts.’
‘Actually, in 2024 we’ll be presenting a set of policies with significant mass appeal,’ I say, perhaps rashly, but to nobody. She appears to have hung up.
‘Who was that?’ my wife calls. ‘The first minister of Scotland,’ I answer, while planning to misrepresent the rest of the conversation. ‘Mm,’ says Akshata, ‘that is about your level.’
