I, Maybot Page 6
‘Others would,’ Tyrie observed drily. ‘Is an adjustment period a priority?’ The Maybot scratched her head. The computer said no. The computer said yes. The computer said: ‘I want my mummy.’
She fought hard to explain her feelings about the EU. It wasn’t them that had changed, it was her. The divorce negotiations weren’t about keeping the bits of the relationship she liked, they were about creating an entirely different relationship. Albeit one that looked pretty much like the old one but with a bit more casual sex thrown in.
The session turned noticeably tetchy when Yvette Cooper, the home affairs select committee chair, questioned the prime minister on immigration. Cooper and the Maybot have previous unfinished business and there’s not much love lost between the two. Was immigration going to be a key part of any Brexit plan? If it turned out that abandoning immigration targets was in the best interests of the country, would she do so?
‘You can’t look at it like that,’ the Maybot snapped. ‘The two things aren’t linked.’
‘That’s odd,’ Cooper replied. ‘Because it was you that first linked them.’
The Maybot fiddled with her pen angrily, trying to make Cooper disappear by the power of thought. No luck. She closed her eyes and tried harder. Still no luck. Why couldn’t Cooper understand that many people had only voted to leave the EU because they weren’t that keen on foreigners? There was only one thing for it.
‘Waffle, waffle,’ the Maybot waffled.
‘If the net migration targets supersede any other Brexit agreements,’ Cooper said, ‘can you tell us which people you don’t want to come to the UK?’
‘Waffle, waffle,’ the Maybot waffled.
‘You haven’t answered any of my questions.’
For the first time in an hour, the Maybot looked relieved. At least she had got one thing right. Though not for long. Sensing weakness, Tyrie moved in for the kill.
‘There’s just a couple of things I would like to clarify,’ he said. ‘Will the UK parliament be kept at least as well informed as other EU parliaments?’
‘Um,’ muttered the Maybot.
‘Is that a yes?’
‘Um?’
‘I’m hearing a no.’ Tyrie moved on to transitional arrangements. The chancellor had said thoughtful politicians were in favour of them. Would the Maybot classify herself as a thoughtful politician?
She had to think very hard about this. Was she thoughtful? Like so many things to do with Brexit, it was hard to say. ‘When I said I was against transitional arrangements,’ she stammered, ‘I didn’t mean to imply I was against implementational arrangements that are near enough the same thing and might all be ripped up anyway if the other EU countries don’t like them and then we’ll all be buggered unless we have some transitional arrangements that I definitely don’t want.’
The Maybot had just proved herself to be the queen of dialectics. By trying to appear thoughtful, she had achieved the opposite.
* * *
Christmas gave everyone two weeks’ breathing space. Both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn used the period to deliver almost identical messages to the country: 2016 had been a tumultuous year in politics. The people of Britain had shown they were unhappy with the way Westminster worked; they felt let down by both politicians and the system. It was time to find a new way of doing politics. To deliver a Brexit that worked for everyone. Most ordinary people chose to ignore both messages and get on with enjoying their time off. Those that did tune in didn’t hold their breath.
* * *
Sophy Ridge gets her money shot from the Maybot
8 JANUARY 2017
And then there were three. Not so long ago The Andrew Marr Show was the only Sunday politics TV game in town. Then came Peston on Sunday and now Sky has joined the party with Sophy Ridge on Sunday. Clearly the television bosses have worked out that in the current climate there are more than enough politicians willing to shoot their mouths off to go round. Or not in the case of Theresa May, who has made a career out of saying nothing very meaningful in her first six months in charge of the country.
‘We’ll be speaking to the prime minister later in the programme,’ said Ridge at the start of the show, trying to make this sound as if she was saving the best till last and not that she expected it to be an uphill struggle and a futile encounter for all concerned. Getting the first live interview of the year with the prime minister is supposed to be a major coup. But for the Maybot, everyone makes an exception.
Instead, Ridge chose to warm up with a pre-recorded interview with Labour’s Tom Watson in a cafe in his West Bromwich constituency. ‘When’s the last time you spoke to Jeremy Corbyn?’ she asked. ‘Ooh, let me think,’ Watson smiled. ‘We did text one another yesterday about the death of the art critic John Berger.’ Watson paused to smile some more. ‘And he did ring me last year to wish me happy Christmas.’ Good to know that the Labour leadership has their fingers on the big issues of the day.
‘So what’s Labour’s policy on immigration?’ Ridge asked. Watson smiled and scratched his head before admitting that he didn’t really know. The next time he saw Corbyn – sometime in March, probably – he’d make a point of asking him. ‘Labour has a cauldron of ideas,’ he said, his smile now veering towards a smirk. Though none that appeared to come readily to mind. He ended by singing his own version of the new Labour anthem: ‘Things can only get worser.’
After a quick roundup of the newspapers – a staple of every Sunday politics show – and another pre-recorded clip of Ridge looking thoroughly miserable trying to find anyone in Boston, Lincolnshire – the most pro-Brexit town in the country – to talk to her, it was time for the Maybot. Ridge immediately went on the offensive, observing that immigration had gone up while she was home secretary so why should anyone trust her on Brexit? Which was more important: reducing immigration or remaining part of the single market?
The Maybot whirred into inaction. We were going to take back control of our borders and get the very best deal for Britain because Brexit meant Brexit and the people had spoken. Understandably, Ridge looked a little puzzled by this and tried asking the same question again. This time the Maybot insisted the issue wasn’t that binary – which will have come as news to the other 27 members of the EU for whom it is precisely that – but that we were still going to take back control and get a deal that would be good for Britain as well as the EU.
‘You seem to be saying that controlling immigration is more important than staying in the single market,’ Ridge said, trying to make some sense of what she had heard. The Maybot looked horrified that any of her answers could have been clearly interpreted and was at pains to reiterate her confusion. This brought the interview seamlessly on to Sir Ivan Rogers’ resignation letter that claimed the government was muddled over Brexit. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth,’ the Maybot rattled. Knowing you’re muddled is a sure sign that you’re not muddled.
Sensing, like so many before her, that she was getting nowhere, Ridge moved on to the crisis in the NHS. ‘There isn’t a crisis,’ the Maybot snapped. People dying on trolleys in A&E were just scare stories. Clearly this was one issue that was binary. Ridge didn’t get much further with the prime minister’s new vision for the ‘shared society’. How was it different from David Cameron’s ‘big society’ that got quickly dropped? Cameron’s society was big and hers was shared. The state would intervene when the state thought it was a good idea and not when it wasn’t. OK?
Then Ridge went for the unexpected. ‘How do you feel about Donald Trump talking of grabbing women by the pussy?’ Ridge asked. The Maybot turned pale, her eyes narrowed and her head looked as if it was about to spin projectile vomit all over the studio. Bugger it. Marr and Peston would never have asked that question. She should have stuck with them, after all. It had been a struggle, but Ridge had got her money shot in the end.
Maybot fails to channel happier times with theme of social injustice
9 JANUARY 2017
Breathe in … a
nd relax. When your first six months in office haven’t gone at all to plan and everyone is accusing you of having done nothing except get muddled, there’s only one thing for it. Go back to the beginning. When Theresa May made her first speech outside Downing Street after becoming prime minister, she spoke passionately about social injustice. About how if you were poor you would die nine years earlier, how if you were black you were treated more harshly by the criminal justice system. That kind of thing.
She hadn’t really meant any of it, which was why she hadn’t got round to doing anything about it, but it had gone down well enough with the punters. So for her first major speech of the new year, the Maybot chose to channel a happier time. A time when people still believed in her. The previous six months had never happened. In her mind’s eye she was still standing outside Downing Street on a July afternoon and not stuck in a room in the Royal Society building off Pall Mall in January talking at the Charity Commission AGM.
‘If you’re poor,’ she began, ‘you are likely to die nine years earlier; if you’re black …’ Inevitably, it was all said with much less commitment than before. It’s hard enough making the same pitch twice, and nearly impossible when the strain of office has given you the appearance of a computer-operated zombie. Inevitably, too, it didn’t go down quite so well the second time round, especially in front of an audience of rightly sceptical public sector and charity professionals.
Still, on the up side, at least she wasn’t having to pretend to sound intelligent when talking about Brexit. Anything but that. Cheered by that thought, the Maybot went on to explain her ideas for a ‘shared society’. Though ‘explained’ and ‘ideas’ might be putting it a little strongly. More like a few thoughts she had come up with over the weekend to take her mind off Brexit. Basically the shared society was a bit like David Cameron’s big society, only shared rather than big. And just as likely to be forgotten within a couple of months.
The Maybot wanted to help the little people. Not the really little people who were so broke and so fed up they would never dream of voting Conservative. She wanted to help the not quite so little people, those who were just about managing. Once again, a pall of déjà vu descended on the room.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Maybot got a little bit confused at this point. After blaming Cameron for most of the mess the country was in – she seemed to have forgotten she was home secretary in his government and had plenty of opportunities to make her voice heard during the referendum campaign – she then went on to give almost the exact same speech about mental illness that her predecessor had given the year before. She even promised to spend the same £1 billion that Dave had promised to spend but had never quite got round to delivering.
Having struggled to the end of the shared cashless society, the prime minister reluctantly took a few questions, most of which were about Brexit. The Maybot clanked with frustration. Hadn’t she just spent half an hour trying to get off the subject? ‘The pound has decreased in value by 1% overnight since you said you were pursuing a hard Brexit,’ observed one reporter. ‘Had the City got things wrong or had she?’
‘Neither,’ she snapped testily. The problem lay with the media, which insisted on reporting her accurately. It was time everyone stopped taking everything she said so literally. After all, it must be obvious to everyone that she really doesn’t know what she is doing, so it is grossly unfair to misrepresent her as someone who isn’t completely winging it. ‘I have been completely clear that Brexit means exactly the same thing I said it meant a couple of months ago,’ the Maybot added gnomically. Though not necessarily what she said it meant the day before.
It’s not EU, it’s us: Maybot outlines Brexit divorce plan
17 JANUARY 2017
For the past six months Theresa May had been trying and failing to conjure some sort of credible Brexit plan and all she’d got for her efforts was a load of flak for being clueless. Eventually, she just got fed up. If she couldn’t come up with a deal she believed in, then she would come up with one she didn’t. She knew it would be economically disastrous for Britain to leave the single market, but if that’s what it took to get everyone who had voted to leave the EU off her back then so be it.
Now to share her moment of enlightenment with the rest of the world. And where better than in one of the gilt-lined state rooms of Lancaster House that had doubled up as Buckingham Place for the Crown? As the room began to fill – cabinet ministers and EU ambassadors in the centre rows, hacks and No. 10 apparatchiks to the side – a lone TV screen displayed the message ‘Plan for Britain’. And nothing else. It was a start, I suppose.
The Maybot slid into the room almost unnoticed and took several deep breaths. She glanced down at her notes. There at the top in capitals was ‘TRY TO SOUND HUMAN. WE’VE GOT TO NEGOTIATE WITH SOME OF THESE PEOPLE LATER’. Easier said than done, but she’d do her best. She’d start by trying to soften everyone up.
‘It’s not you,’ she said, looking directly at the ambassadors. ‘It’s us’. Britain had simply outgrown the EU and no longer wanted to be constrained by sleeping with only 27 partners. Britain wanted to go and shag the rest of the world. We had asked for an open marriage and the EU had said no, so a divorce was inevitable. But no one should panic. Britain wasn’t leaving Europe. Much as we’d like to if that was geographically possible.
Understandably, being dumped live on global TV didn’t go down terribly well with the visiting ambassadors. There was a lot of head-shaking and whispering. The Maybot tried not to catch their eye and moved on to the part of her speech marked ‘Global Britain’.
‘The referendum was a vote for a new global Britain,’ she insisted, hoping that no one would remember that many people who had voted to leave the EU wanted as little as possible to do with the rest of the world. Too full of foreigners stealing our jobs. ‘Global Britain, global Britain,’ she repeated. If she said it often enough, someone might believe it. Even if she didn’t.
Having got the pleasantries out of the way, the Maybot moved on to her 12-point plan. She wasn’t entirely sure why there were so many points in the plan, as most of them were just vague promises to clarify things that hadn’t yet happened, but her advisers had told her that cutting the plan down to just three points – 1. Get out the single market. 2. Get out the customs union. 3. To hell with the lot of you – wouldn’t play out that well.
‘Global Britain, global Britain,’ the Maybot droned. If in doubt, return to the leitmotif. Britain wanted to be really, really global – Michael Gove had promised her that Donald Trump was dead keen on coming to a winlose deal with the UK – but she was keen to extend the hand of friendship to the little old EU. So if the EU was prepared to give us everything we wanted in the negotiations, then we might just continue to trade and talk to it.
But it was up to the EU to show willing. ‘It would not be the act of a friend to treat us punitively in the negotiations,’ she said. Several ambassadors had to pinch themselves at this point; it hadn’t been the act of a friend to vote to leave. But the Maybot had one more sting in the tail. ‘No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain,’ she added. Her way or no way. If the worst came to the worst, Britain could always settle for WTO rules and become a tax haven.
‘The country is coming together,’ she concluded. One last white lie wouldn’t hurt. She knew it had never been so divided, and the divisions were only likely to get deeper now she had declared her hand for a hard Brexit that she hadn’t voted for and didn’t want. But people had demanded clarity and she’d given it to them. There was almost no applause at the conclusion of her speech but for once she didn’t care.
Somehow she felt a little lighter. A weight was off her shoulders.
* * *
Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech prompted an unexpected display of sweetness and light on the Conservative benches at prime minister’s questions the following day. It was as if the divisions of the past six months had never happened, as the Eurosceptics joined ranks with the Eu
rophiles to praise the prime minister’s brilliance.
Anna Soubry, normally Theresa May’s bête noire, could only marvel at the clarity and leadership the prime minister had provided and just hoped that she could write down her 12 objectives so parliament could venerate them as holy relics. Alistair Burt, another erstwhile troublemaker, was overwhelmed by how constructive the speech had been and prayed that God would grant her even more constructiveness in the months and years ahead.
Even the doggedly pro-EU Ken Clarke had only the most mild of rebukes for Theresa, saying it would have been nice if she had come and told parliament about what she was going to say first. The days when the Tories washed their dirty linen in public appeared to be at least temporarily over.
Sensing her moment, the Maybot chose to ignore any inconsistencies in her position and chose to repeat selected highlights of her Brexit speech. Only this time adding a little more hyperbole. ‘We are a global Britain,’ she had said. ‘We are a more outward looking, more tolerant country. We embrace everyone.’
Except the 27 countries of the EU who had been nothing but a burden to us, holding us back in our attempts to make the world a better place for everyone – even those we didn’t particularly like and wouldn’t want anywhere near our green and pleasant land.
Except also the 12 Supreme Court judges. Well, eight of them. After hearing the government’s Article 50 appeal in December, the Supreme Court had delayed delivering its judgment till the end of January. Not so much because there had been a great deal to think about, but more because it didn’t want anyone in government to think it hadn’t spent enough time deliberating over its verdict. And besides, what judge could resist a bit of fabricated suspense?
But on January 24th, the Supreme Court duly upheld the original decision of the High Court. The pro-Brexit newspapers were again outraged. The government wasn’t best pleased either.