I, Maybot Read online

  Nothing had changed when the Supreme Leader came up against the BBC’s Grand Inquisitor, Andrew Neil, later in the evening. Why was everything going so badly, he asked. Kim Jong-May had a ready response. It was because she was going out to the country and talking to them. And telling them something different every time.

  ‘Your policies are uncosted and half-baked,’ said Neil. The Supreme Leader didn’t deny it. No point really. ‘You’ve just done a U-turn on social care.’

  ‘Nothing has changed. Strong and stable,’ the Maybot replied, trying desperately to count down the clock. A look of resignation crossed Neil’s face. He stifled a half yawn before suggesting that this must be the first time a manifesto promise had been broken before a government was elected and that Jeremy Corbyn now appeared to be rewriting Conservative policy.

  The Supreme Leader’s mouth opened and shut but no words came out. She wasn’t used to being spoken to so bluntly. Eventually she came up with an explanation. The manifesto had never been intended to be seen as a policy document. Rather it was just a set of vague principles. Random words that just happened to have been strung into sentences. The idea that anyone was ever meant to take it seriously was ‘Fake Claims’.

  Neil moved on to the NHS. Where was she going to find the extra £8 billion for the NHS? At this point, the Maybot was taken over by malware. She shrugged. Down the back of the sofa? And what about the £10 billion for NHS infrastructure? Down the back of another sofa?

  ‘You’ve broken your promises on reducing the deficit and immigration,’ Neil concluded. ‘Why on earth should anyone believe a word you say?’

  ‘This election is all about trust,’ Kim Jong-May replied in one of the greatest acts of self-harm seen on TV. ‘That’s why I’ve called the election.’ After promising not to.

  By the end of the 30 minutes, all that was left of the Maybot was a puddle on the studio floor. A cleaner came in and mopped up. The slops were sent back to Downing Street in a taxi.

  * * *

  On the night of 22 May a suicide bomber blew himself up at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, killing 22 adults and children and injuring 250 more. The following morning Theresa May gave a statement on the attack. She looked haunted, slightly diminished even, as she walked out of Downing Street to address the media. The previous evening she had been a mere party leader campaigning hard to keep her job; now she was having to act as the voice of the country after the worst terrorist attack on the UK since 2005.

  It’s no easy job to capture the nation’s mood in just a few words, but the prime minister did it well. She began steadily, describing in some detail what was known about the suicide bombing at the concert and expressing her sympathy for the victims and their family and friends.

  Her voice cracked a little as she said: ‘It is now beyond doubt that the people of Manchester and of this country have fallen victim to a callous terrorist attack, an attack that targeted some of the youngest people in our society with cold calculation.’ This was what made this act of terrorism particularly shocking. It hadn’t been indiscriminate: there was no small, cold comfort to be found in its random senselessness. Instead, the killer had deliberately gone after the softest of soft targets: young girls on what should have been one of their best nights of the year.

  She understood that there were protocols to be observed and that one of them was her standing there in Downing Street saying the sort of things she was saying. She knew that some would look at the optics of her appearance and be thinking, ‘Well, she had to say that, didn’t she?’ But just because it had to be said didn’t make it any less true. She meant every word.

  Yes, we all had every right to be shocked. Like the rest of us, her first reaction to the news had been ‘Not again’. But humanity would prevail. The bastards would never win. Never. There were just too many of us on the right side of history. At times, words come cheap to politicians. These ones looked like they cost the prime minister dear. And were all the better for it.

  As a mark of respect, all parties agreed to suspend campaigning for several days. When it resumed, this brief insight we had been given into the prime minister’s more human side was nowhere to be seen.

  * * *

  ‘It’s very clear’: May disappears into a dreamland of her own

  29 MAY 2017

  Dragging her heels on to the studio floor, the Supreme Leader finally got to the business end of the election. Taking questions from real people. And Jeremy Paxman. Not easy for someone who struggles to talk human. She had rehearsed at a rally in Twickenham earlier in the afternoon when she relaunched her campaign after the ‘dementia tax’ meltdown, but it hadn’t gone well. She had just repeated the phrases ‘strong and stable’ and ‘coalition of chaos’ over and over again. Maybot 2.0 had sounded very much like Maybot 1.0.

  ‘Happy birthday, Faisal,’ the Supreme Leader said to Sky’s Faisal Islam, who was compèring the audience debate. Backstage there was a huge cheer from her team. She had remembered her instructions on how to sound like an ordinary person. And then promptly forgot them.

  Her first question came from Martin, a police officer, who wanted to know what she was doing about police cuts. ‘It’s very clear,’ she said, before disappearing into a dreamland of her own. One where crime was changing and policing was changing and everything was changing apart from the Supreme Leader’s inability to give a direct answer.

  By the time she stopped assembling words into random sentences, Martin appeared to have been rendered so comatose he couldn’t even remember what he had asked. Islam stepped in to help. Police numbers had decreased by 20,000 on her watch. The Supreme Leader’s mouth worked itself into a rictus smile. Better that than no smile at all. Just.

  That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the audience participation section. People asked her questions about the ‘dementia tax’, winter fuel payments, schools and the NHS and the Supreme Leader did her best to fill the 22 minutes with the deadest of dead air. She hadn’t changed her policy on anything because what was in the manifesto was never intended to be policy. It was just a series of vague talking points. And when sometime after the election she had decided what was best for everyone, she would let the country know.

  This did not go down particularly well with some members of the audience. One man commented ‘total bollocks’ while those who were still awake laughed out loud with existential despair. It was that or kill themselves. The Supreme Leader’s smile twisted into a silent scream. She wasn’t used to such lèse majesté.

  When Jeremy Paxman had interviewed Jeremy Corbyn earlier in the evening, he had looked and behaved like a man hellbent on acting as a parody of himself. He had interrupted the Labour leader at every opportunity and turned what should have been forensic questioning into a TV turnoff. Someone had clearly had a word with him in the break and he did at least make an effort to let the Supreme Leader get a word in edgeways. Not necessarily to the viewers’ advantage, as she continued to do her level best to say nothing at all.

  ‘You’ve basically changed your mind about everything,’ he concluded after listing all the U-turns the Maybot had made in the last few years. ‘An EU negotiator would conclude that you are a blowhard who collapses at the first sign of gunfire.’ It was Paxman’s one telling intervention of the entire evening. The Supreme Leader narrowed her eyes into a death stare at the sound of more laughter. She then just went back to saying nothing at length until she could hear the studio manager call time.

  ‘That went well,’ the Supreme Leader said on the way home. By which she meant it hadn’t been the total disaster she had feared.

  Corbyn was also reflecting on a decent night’s work. The audience had appreciated his warmth and empathy, they liked the sound of his policies and after days of being asked about the IRA, he had come up with an answer that sounded vaguely plausible. And being harangued by Paxman hadn’t been that bad. Other than for everyone at home. Paxman’s main complaint seemed to have been that he wasn’t giving a very good
impression of being a Trot. And as that had been one of his main aims, it was job done.

  * * *

  With Theresa May remaining true to her word not to take part in any debate that involved interaction with anyone else from another party, television viewers were treated to the faintly surreal experience of watching the home secretary, Amber Rudd, defend the government’s record against the leaders of the other six parties. If the idea had been to paper over the cracks of the prime minister’s lack of warmth and spontaneity, it wasn’t wholly successful after it emerged that Rudd’s father had died just a couple of days before. Though Rudd was adamant that the decision to go ahead with the debate as planned was hers and hers alone, it certainly didn’t do much to make Theresa May look a more caring politician.

  * * *

  The Hand is left to do the heavy lifting while Maybot reboots

  31 MAY 2017

  Speak to the Hand. AKA the home secretary. The Maybot was clear that there was a reason she wasn’t taking part in the BBC leaders’ debate.

  She was above it all and was choosing to take part in her own Supreme Leaders’ debate instead. Just her and her very own echo chamber reverberating with deathless soundbites.

  It was an explanation that hadn’t gone down particularly well at the Bath engineering factory she had visited before settling down to put her feet up to watch Amber Rudd do the heavy lifting.

  Having stood through several minutes of the Supreme Leader trying to think of arguments why anyone should vote for her in an alienated stupor, the staff only started applauding when the media asked if the real reason she was ducking the debate was because she was afraid voters would get to see how truly mediocre and uninspiring she really was.

  The Supreme Leader tried laughing as her minders had programmed her to do, but the only noise that came out was a rusty croak.

  ‘I’m interested that Corbyn is interested in the number of TV appearances he is making,’ she said, a reply that left everyone confused.

  The Maybot usually deals either in tautology or non-sequitur, but this time her system had crashed completely and she had managed both at the same time. To no obvious advantage.

  When pressed to clarify what she meant by this, the Supreme Leader did a quick reboot. The Labour leader ought to be spending less of his time concentrating on his telly appearances and more on the upcoming Brexit negotiations.

  ‘That’s what I’m doing,’ she insisted to a wall of TV cameras, momentarily forgetting that it was she who had called the general election 11 days before the Brexit negotiations began. Easily done.

  The BBC’s Mishal Husain got the debate under way by inviting the five party leaders, along with the SNP’s deputy leader, Angus Robertson, and the Hand, to make their opening remarks.

  ‘Who do you want to lead this country on 8 June?’ asked the Hand, clearly expecting the answer to be someone who couldn’t even be bothered to turn up.

  Tim Farron was worried the Supreme Leader might be spending the evening peeking through people’s windows. He needn’t have been. She was safely tucked up at home working on the Brexit plan that someone had inconveniently interrupted.

  Thereafter the debate largely became open pack warfare on the Hand, with every other leader, apart from UKIP’s Paul Nuttall from time to time – with friends like these, etc. – stepping in to point out that the Tories actually had a piss-poor record on everything from living standards to immigration and social care.

  Even the audience was against her, cheering on Corbyn, Farron, Robertson and Caroline Lucas as they ripped into her. The BBC said the audience had been selected to be representative. If so, expect a Labour landslide next week.

  At which point, the Hand morphed into the Handbot. A hand stuck on repeat.

  ‘Jeremy thinks he has a magic money tree,’ she said three times, hoping that at least one of the barbs would stick. It didn’t. In desperation she again appealed to everyone to vote for the Supreme Leader who wasn’t there.

  Even so, the Handbot was probably making a better case for the Supreme Leader than the Supreme Leader could have made for herself.

  The Handbot’s trickiest moment came with the last question on leadership, as all the other participants predictably chose to point out that one of the things that most defines a leader is the willingness to show up in person and defend your policies.

  ‘Part of being a strong leader is having a good team around you,’ the Handbot said gamely before giving up the unequal battle. Hell, if she was going to stand in for the Supreme Leader, why shouldn’t she get the credit?

  ‘Have you not read my manifesto?’ the Handbot announced imperiously. It sounded very much as if a palace coup had just been declared.

  The Supreme Leader is dead. Long live the Supreme Leader.

  Up against the Maybot, Corbyn struggles not to be a personality

  1 JUNE 2017

  Call it the quantity theory of personality. The less warmth and spontaneity the Supreme Leader reveals she has, the more engaging Jeremy Corbyn becomes.

  There was a time at the beginning of the election when the Labour leader looked a little lost; candidates deliberately kept his face off their campaign literature and all but the most devoted of his shadow cabinet would only appear on a platform with him under duress. But as, despite numerous software updates, the Maybot has continued to crash and burn, so Corbyn’s momentum has grown.

  For his big Brexit speech, Corbyn chose to come to Pitsea in Essex, a constituency in which 70% voted to leave the EU and in which Labour came third in the 2015 election behind both the Tories and UKIP. The days of him only campaigning in areas where he needs to shore up the Labour vote are long gone. The message being sent out was unambiguous: anyone who voted Leave had nothing to fear; Brexit was safe in Labour hands. There would be no backtracking.

  It wasn’t immediately clear just how many of the 200 Labour activists who had gathered in the sweltering heat of the wood-panelled hall – the room must double as a sauna in off-peak hours – of the Pitsea leisure centre were Leavers.

  All seemed to be there for one thing and one thing only – to catch a glimpse of Jeremy. The anti-personality personality. Corbyn has always claimed that his political career has never been about him, but when you’re up against a black hole in the form of the Maybot, then it’s hard not to be a personality. Just being able to stand up, look vaguely human and talk in sentences that mean something is all it takes.

  Corbyn, closely followed by his Brexit negotiating team of Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Whispering Barry Gardiner, all got a prolonged standing ovation as they walked on stage. The Labour leader took it pretty much in his stride but Thornberry lapped it up. It may only have been reflected glory but after years in the shadows, she is happy to take any glory on offer.

  Even Starmer seemed to be affected by the occasion. Often the shadow Brexit secretary can come across as rather dour, but he managed to throw in a few extra whoops and smiles for free in his warm-up act. For a lawyer used to charging by the minute, that was quite some concession.

  Then came Jeremy. To the manner born. ‘Let me introduce you to my Brexit team,’ he began, throwing his star-dust towards the star-crossed lovers. ‘Look at their intelligence and confidence.’ And in that moment it was possible to look at Keir, Emily and Whispering Barry and imagine them going head to head with the EU. It was certainly hard to think of them doing a worse job than Boris, David Davis and Liam Fox.

  Next came his Brexit plan. It was considerably more detailed than the Supreme Leader’s Brexit plan – a plan which she insists only she has yet refuses to divulge. He promised an immediate recognition of the rights of all EU nationals currently living in the UK along with the protection of workers’ rights, and maintaining tariff-free access, but that wasn’t really the point. What mattered most was that he promised hope.

  With the Tories offering nothing but more austerity to pile on top of the seven years the country had already endured, he was offering something better.
There was a light at the end of the Brexit tunnel. We could leave the EU with some grace. Not by crashing out under the mantra of no deal being better than a bad deal.

  Thornberry couldn’t resist trying to grab her moment in the spotlight but struck an off note by saying she was even happy to take stupid questions from reporters. When you’re just beginning to get the media on side, suggesting they are dim may be a sign of the confidence Corbyn saw in his team but not the intelligence.

  But no one cared too much as this was Jeremy’s day, Jeremy’s show. He laughed – in answer to a question from Sky’s Faisal Islam, he joked that the first thing he would say to Angela Merkel was ‘Ich bin ein Corbyn’ – and he was entirely relaxed. Campaigning is what he enjoys most and he was loving every minute. Why wouldn’t he when everyone in the room wanted a selfie? Nor was he in the mood to talk about possible post-election deals with other parties as he was planning to win outright. That still might seem a little fanciful, but far less so than a few weeks ago.

  * * *

  On the night of Saturday 3 June there was yet another terrorist attack, this time in London. A van ploughed into pedestrians on London Bridge before coming to a standstill. Three terrorists, armed with knives, then jumped out and started randomly killing people in the vicinity before these were shot dead by police. Eight members of the public were killed and another 48 injured. With the general election less than a week away, campaigning was only halted for one day. The best way to show that Britain’s democratic values could not be destroyed by terrorism was to let the democratic process continue as normal.

  * * *

  Maybot malfunctions under pressure over disappearing police