Max Power: An Anti-Fantasy of the Near Future

Episode One

Stephen Maxwell spent a moment adjusting his hair in the glass of a shop. It wouldn’t do to go on-camera with his barnet out of order. Barnet! He’d used a genuine bit of Cockney rhyming slang in his own mind. How about that? Nobody could say he wasn’t down with the peasants. Whoops! Just as well nobody could hear those thoughts, what?
    He hadn’t been sure about the new style at all, all this gel and what have you, he preferred the good old 80s boy grown middle aged look- a bit of a sweep and a flop – but his spinbods had told him that the slightly sticky-up look would play well with the youth. He was glad, now, that he had gone along with it. It looked fab on the billboards, and his wife Jacqueline had said only that morning that it made him look like a complete tosspot. That, he was sure, was a good thing. He would ask Rupert, his assistant, to look it up on the interweb. But first things first, he had a TV interview. It wasn’t every day one became Prime Minister. “Call me Steve”, he mumbled to himself, rehearsing his man-of-the-people-despite-being-a-privileged-Thatcherite bonhomie. He knew he could turn it on.

It had all been terribly exciting. He had been swept up to the Palace (HM terribly sweet, the D of E highly amusing with his quip that he had thought it was another bloody Jock, with a name like that). Then he had sat down to the important business of  confirming his ministers – Team Max, as he liked to call them.  The gentlemen (and little ladies too – gosh, mustn’t forget the girls!) of the press had started calling him ‘Max’ during the campaign (and his wife, of course became Jax Max). Funny, no-one at school had called him that – it was always Atticus, or Ganymede or some such. He hadn’t been sure whether he liked it until the spinbods told him that it played really well with Nuts-reading voters in the West Midlands and East Anglia. After that, he had ‘gone for it’, as they said, getting expressions like ‘to the Max’ in his speeches and interviews at every possible opportunity, courting headlines like ‘Max Attax’ and ‘Max Hacks Tax’ , and it had seemed natural to christen his cabinet-in-waiting Team Max.

The only annoyance to this splendid day had been the awkward little scene when the former PM had come in to repossess his swingball and Poldark DVDs, made worse by three or four of the servants, or whatever they were officially called, bleating on and whining that they would miss him. Really ! Some people just didn’t know how to behave.

By 10 p.m., he had kicked off his brogues, and was looking forward to a little well-earned fizz, when Rupert came into the Purple Room, clearing his throat, nervously. “Er, Prime Minister..” he began. Stephen looked up in response. “It’s Mr English for you, says he won’t be put on hold while the extended mix of Club Tropicana plays on a loop. He insists on speaking to you right now”.  Oh curse the bounder, why could it not wait until morning? Stephen thought that he had put Duncan English properly in his place during the campaign. All this Scottish Parliament business was a load of rot after all, wasn’t it? A load of Braveheart and all that. He didn’t have time to be coming up with policies to placate the painted people north of the wall, did he? He was inclined to instruct Rupert to tell the odious Caledoinan to ‘naff off’ (see how he was up with the latest lingo?) but thought better of it when he remembered how much money Rupert’s pa had provided to the party. Wouldn’t do to be a bad boss to Lord Argent’s boy, would it? With a sigh, he headed to the Grey Office to take the call.

Episode Two

Duncan English braced himself for the voice at the other end of the line. He knew that Maxwell would put that subtle, mocking, emphasis on his surname. All his life he’d cursed it. What malign fate had saddled the leader of the Scottish Freedom Party with a name like English? It wasn’t as if his family were anything other than straight down the line Scots. There hadn’t been a drop of Anglo blood in there for, oh, as far back as records went: his mother assured him of that. She had made an exhaustive check of births and deaths and parish registers before considering marrying his father. How often Duncan had considered changing his surname, yet he had never done so. It would have been some sort of victory for the English, sending him running off from a mere collection of letters. And didn’t it just rub it in that the English-as-a-whey-faced-vicar PM and leader of the pathologically Anglocentric Reversative Party had a properly admirable Scots name like Maxwell?
    He sighed, and realised that he had missed the new PM’s words. He would never know if he had been mocked or not. There was that aura of compound privilege conveyed through the medium of expectant breathing which informed him that Maxwell was on the other end. Right, it was time for business. Come on Duncan, get a grip.
    “So good of you to find time to speak to the First Minister of Scotland, Mr Maxwell,” he began, drizzling each word with a soupçon of sarcasm. Maxwell had, after all, failed to respond to any of the messages he had left over the course of the election campaign, or to engage with any of the points he had raised about the future of Scotland. The leader of the Reversatives had not deigned to bring his battle bus north of the border, at least not after the mass kilted mooning which had greeted his early attempt at a foray into Gretna, and it had hardly been a shock that the party had failed to manage a single MP in Scotland. The SFP were riding high there, with one or two Fraternals and the usual Workers in the central belt. 
    Sarcasm appeared to be wasted on Stephen Maxwell. “Not at all, old chap!” he replied, hatefully chummily. Duncan bristled but ploughed on without challenging the odious implication of some shared background or outlook. He must not be distracted. This was, after all, his big chance. Scotland expected.
    “I wondered if you had made a decision on your government’s policy with regard to the Destiny Three,” he enquired.
    “Destiny… I’m sorry, I’m not quite with you…” the PM said, without any sign of discomfort. Ah, the confidence of privilege, how deep-seated it was. An idea appeared to strike him, and he broke in, “Oh, you mean Miss Beyoncé Knowles’s talented popular vocal harmony ensemble – yes they are rather top totty, aren’t they? But why do I have to have a policy on them? Is this a bit like me having to pretend I liked association football and understood what it was like to live in a tower block?”
    Duncan groaned, then snapped (Damn the man – what was it about those types that always made him lose his rag?).”No, this is nothing to do with Beyoncé. The Destiny Three were the three pledges the SFP made to the people of Scotland, to which we challenged all parties engaged in the Westminster election campaign to respond”.
    There was a short silence at the other end of the line, and then “I see. Could you… I don’t suppose you could just … refresh my memory on those pledges, could you, old fellow?”
    Duncan plunged straight in, keeping it factual, dignified. He explained, in deliberately slow and measured tones, what had been written on the thousands of scale models of the Stone of Destiny, one popped through the letter-box of every home in Scotland in the run-up to the general election.
    “Number one: Scotland to have sole control of oil revenues from oilfields off its coast.
    Number two: Scotland to be compensated for the undermining of the Darien Project through the jealousy of England.
    Number three: Official and financial recognition that the industrial revolution and consequent prosperity of Britain was almost entirely down to the genius of Scotland.”
    “Oh, I say!” came the splutter from the end of the line, followed by a grating series of guffaws. “Oh, Mr English, you Wee Freedoms really are charmingly clueless, aren’t you?”
    “That, I take it, is a no?” he monotoned.
    “Well of course it is a ‘no’, English. Honestly, I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life. Now if you don’t mind, I must get back to the business of running the whole country” came back the PM’s voice, radiating mild vexation, as with a troublesome child/ “I dare say you have some bagpiping regulations or sword-dancing equal opportunities consultations to organise, so I’ll bid you good night.”
    It was as well that the line went dead at that point, Stephen Maxwell having put down the receiver, for Duncan was provoked to some rather unstatesmanlike swearing at the effrontery of the effete buffoon. After five minutes of deep breathing, he managed to calm down.
    “Well, Stephen Maxwell,” he said, into the receiver he found he was still clutching, “you leave me no choice!” It was quite satisfying to throw the receiver down, even though there was nobody to hear. Duncan English smiled the smile of the resolved. It was time to begin Operation Wallace. 

Ep 3

It took Stephen Maxwell only moments to get over his slight annoyance at the effrontery of that pushy little Caledonian prole. He was back to fine and dandy after a quick adjustment of the hair in the newly installed mirror. Had the last incumbent been one of those vampires from Buddy the Vampire Player [works well on nerdy types] or The Tealight Saga [mention whenever near impressionable teenage girls – cor don’t they grow up fast these days?] – there hadn’t been a single mirror in the place when he had arrived. Maybe he just hadn’t liked to see his ugly jowly ‘Boat Race’, knowing that the Reservatives had a younger, smoother chap in charge.  Right then, back to the party. Give them a good laugh at the latest Flower of Effing Scotland nonsense.

    Typical bloody Derek Wilson, thought Duncan, finally giving up his attempts to contact his so-called chief of communications. Phone turned off, wife at home with no idea where he is. Derek Wilson had spent years holding forth about the evils of the Union, and the need for an independent Scotland, swearing to give his last drop of blood to the Cause. When it came to the actual moment, though, the actual chance to do something about it, rather than wailing endless drunken Jacobite songs, the man was missing presumed shagging one of the earnest young women who inexplicably found a spreading and balding former firebrand sexually irresistible.  Maybe it was for the best, Duncan rationalised. He might be best off handling this one himself.  Steeling himself for a conversation with the minions of the Great Sassenach Satan (no, he was a modern, no-knee-jerk-English-kicking nationalist, stop the stupid exaggeration!) he put through a call to the news desk of the Daily Moil.