SAM woke up before six on Friday morning to find the bed beside her empty and
the sheets cold. She got up and padded through the flat till she found Dave
gazing bleary-eyed at the TV news.
“Who won?” she asked, picking up the empty coffee mug beside him.
“No, by a 10-point margin,” Dave yawned.
Sam was puzzled: “You don’t seem very excited.”
“No, I am, really, just a bit tired.”
“Well, I’ll make you a nice cup of coffee and then you’d better have a shower
and change. They’ll be expecting a speech for the eight o’clock news.”
Dave didn’t have the heart to tell Sam what, or who, was really on his mind.
He was thinking of Cistine Chapelle, an American exchange student he’d met
at Oxford. She wasn’t the prettiest girl around, but she was bright and
funny, and she had the most enormous…
Anyway, Dave had tried and tried to get her into bed. He’d sworn that he loved
her, promised to fly to the States to meet her folks, said he’d introduce
her to his titled friends. And then, after he’d finally got what he wanted,
she’d said: “I love that you made all those promises, Davey. But you didn’t
need to. I always thought you were real cute.”
Now Scotland had said the same thing. He’d given them Devo Max, the Barnett
formula, pretty much anything they wanted. And now he needn’t have promised
them anything at all.
Ten points, Dave thought to himself, stepping under the shower. Ten effing
points! Everyone had been saying it was neck-and-neck – and all along he’d
been heading for victory.
Still, there was a very big bright side to the whole thing. First, he wasn’t
the Prime Minister who lost the Union, which meant he was far less
vulnerable to Boris. And, even better, he didn’t have to write Gordon Brown
a thank-you letter.
For two ghastly days after that cantankerous old curmudgeon’s speech it had
looked like it might be “Gordon wot won it” – Brown, saviour of our nation –
and Dave, would have grit his teeth, pick up his pen and grovel. But no,
that 10-point margin had nothing to do with Gordon.
And then there was Ed. Poor, poor Ed – he really was lost up a very brown
creek without the merest hint of a paddle. After all, if the Scots got Devo
Max, then the English had to get something too, or there’d be hell to pay.
The West Lothian Question was about to get an answer, directed at Scottish
MPs who presumed to vote on English matters. And the second word of that
answer was “off”.
How was Ed going to square that circle? How could he possibly justify letting
his Scots contingent rule the English? But how could he govern without them?
On that cheery thought, Dave walked outside to meet the media. A phrase had
just entered his mind: “the millions of voices of England”. Yes, that was
it. He’d casually drop England into the speech and let it echo like the
crash of doom around Ed’s capacious brain. Dave had been fretting too much
lately. Let Ed do the worrying for a change!
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(via Telegraph)
