AH Vignette: The Binary Choice

“Remember the Liberal Party?” asked Tim.

This question had rung like a bell across a momentary silence around the glass-strewn table at the Tit and Pheasant (the name being an unlikely compromise when two olde-worlde pubs, whose crooked crannies backed onto one another somewhere in the jagged mess of bins behind the street frontage, decided to knock through the gents toilets and merge to save on running costs – the Dog and Pheasant and the Lady Godiva were very well-matched, in the end) and the lads collectively mumbled the words “David Lloyd George, yeah?” and “ Err… no” in various combinations.

Julian was the intellectual of the group – you were kind of led down that path as a child when your only namesakes were the most obnoxiously dull member of the Famous Five and Julian bloody Clary – and he dragged his eyes away from the TV in the corner to divulge his knowledge. “Yeah,” he said, “they basically gave us Votes for Women, the Welfare State and victory in World War One and then just collapsed. They still had a couple of MPs into the 70s, I think.”

“But why did th-“ asked Nick.

“I’m trying to listen to Peter Snow, mate.”

“Right.” The other guys sipped their pints in unison.

“I don’t like politics.” said Ed. “It just doesn’t interest me. Like, I don’t mind that Paul Martin – the Mayor of That London, you know. He’s a right laugh, in’t’e? Remember when he brought that tub of lard to that London Weekend TV debate because the Tory wouldn’t show? You wouldn’t see the rest of them doing anything like that. I mean, all this stuff…” he waved vaguely at the TV screen up in the corner, “is a bit boring, yeah?”

“I just spoil my ballot, mate.” chipped in Welsh Mark. “Just like everybody else.”

“Paul’s lost his touch. He’s just phoning it in now,” said Danny the Ginge, “not that you can blame him after so long in the job, but he’ll never be PM.” Nick and Cuth were both transfixed by the bloke on the telly, so the convo flagged a bit there. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet.

“So if you follow me to our V-R House of Commons,” he was saying, “you can see the Conservatives and their allied parties along here on the Government benches, and along here opposite them you can, I’m told, see Labour sitting on the Opposition – my headset’s on the blink, but – oh right, yes, you can see it all on your screens, so it’s alright. Right. And over there are the odds and sods, taking us to 660 seats. The magic number here is 330, of course. Anything above that, and the winning Party will be able to govern with a majority and, who knows, maybe even implement some of its manifesto policies over the next few years. Now, we’ve got our exit poll coming up shortly, but let’s go over to John Curtice, our resident psephologist. First of all, John: what is Psephology?”

“I can’t believe they aren’t showing the football.”

----​

David Dimbleby raised himself to his full height, which felt a lot higher than it always looked on Television. He had been bred for this job. The Dimblebys had been declaring the results of elections since very start of Democracy. Or at least the very start of televised democracy, which near enough. His own son was over at the experts’ desk poring over local election data from Dane Valley Borough Council, and over there, his granddaughter was desultorily filing her nails beside the coffee machine. This is how hereditary priesthoods start. Dimbleby began to intone the Words: “As the bells of Big Ben peal out to mark ten o’clock, we can reveal that [] will be the next Government.” And then he and everyone else would repeat the Provisos verbatim until Nuneaton.

Here it went. “As the bells of Big Ben peal out to mark ten o’clock, we can reveal that… there will be a… hung parliament.” There was a snicker from near the coffee machine. David Dimbleby needed a sit down. He was too old for this. 2013 was supposed to be the future! “So, Peter, tell our viewers: what on Earth is a hung parliament?”

“Well, David…”

----​

“What the actual fuck are these seat totals?!” screamed Nick, his eyes bathed in the electric light of his ThoughtPad. “275 Labour, 258 Tory. Where are the others? Who the fuck are the Scottish Moderate Party? Jules?” he looked over at Julian, who was frozen to his seat, Skittlebrau untouched. “Jules?”

“What?”

“Who are the Scottish Moderate Party?”

“Um… they’re a minor Party in Scotland espousing, kind of, sensible, non-controversial policies between the Tories and Labour, and they also want Scottish autonomy, but they aren’t fussed about actually working towards it. Nah, it’s the Nats you really want to look out for.”

“A minor Party, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Fifty-one MPs.”

“Bull. Shit.”

“And those Nationalists are going to get two in the Highlands.”

“But that leaves six, doesn’t it. Those are going to normal parties… right?”

“Huh. Um, Jules… have you heard of the Progressive Party?”

----​

“Hello, David! You join us here in Barnsley Central for one of the earlier declarations of the night. Avid fans of politics may remember that this seat – or rather, its predecessor - was held by Lord Tindale since time immemorial, and recently, his son Jack caused a family feud by abandoning Mr Hatton’s Labour Party for a new outfit called the, er… Citizens’ Party. Now, word in the counting room is that Tindale Junior has done rather well for himself here, against all expectations. Yes indeed, ever since he went off to London he’s been called things like a ‘Brewdog-swilling bourgeois’ and a ‘New Labour nepotist’ on NatterBox, but evidently his platform of… well, his platform of manageable social democracy seems to be a sleeper hit to the people of Barnsley Central! Now I… think they’re ready to declare, and we’ll see if he can… yeah.”

“-ay Carter, the Conservative Party Candidate: 5,485 votes.
Dave Gibson, Independent Labour Party: 7,941 votes.
Lieutenant-Colonel Dan Jarvis, Labour Party: 10,182 votes
Jack Tindale, Citizens’ Party: 10,186 votes
The number of spoilt - ”

“Well, David, a small segment of the crowd has gone apeshit… ah. Am I sacked?”

----​

Julian hadn’t been helpful. He just sat there, shaking. The other lads had variously gone to clubs or bed. Now the landlord was staring cantankerously at the bell, then the clock, and then at Nick. Nick himself was too busy on his ThoughtPad, refreshing the Virtupedia pages of these random Parties every other minute as they were updated with interesting facts and even more interesting lies by The Virtual Generation. There were some horribly lurid stories: lulled by electoral failure into a false sense of security, a lot of the new intake had turned out already to be sex pests, embezzlers and Web Trolls. The pollster that Dimbleby had spoken to said that people wanted a change from the old ideological point-scoring, and just wanted some sensible, centrist voices to provide a voice somewhere between Derek Hatton and John Redgrave. Maybe the old Liberal Party could have offered something like that, but it was way too late now.

He went for a piss. The landlord rolled his eyes and staggered over to the store cupboard to get his mop out again. While he emptied himself into the trough, Nick couldn’t help but see, in his mind’s eye, the seat projections hovered just in front of his eyes, emblazoning themselves on every other surface he tried momentarily to concentrate on. There hadn’t been a third party in the Commons since 1978, and now there were dozens of the fuckers!

Labour – 275
Conservative – 258
+ Ulster Unionist Party – 18
+ National Liberal Party – 1
Scottish Moderate Party – 51
Progressive Party – 39
Citizens’ Party – 9
Communist Party – 6
Independent Labour Party – 3


The landlord came in with his mop and bucket, slopping the floor. Nick hadn’t even finished and the bastard was hurrying him. Well, he’d show him! He slowed down to a trickle.

“You seen the election?”

“Yeah, good result for the middling folk.” As a landlord, he made this sound as if this category included 99% of the population of the UK, and simultaneously, just you and him.

“Too right. I kind of wish the old Liberal Party had stuck around all this time, so people wouldn’t be so freaked out on NatterBox tonight about the existence of more than two parties.”

“Liberals, eh? That takes me back. They just kind of withered away… Hey, mate, here’s an interesting little factoid for you. You know David Lloyd George, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he started his own splinter Party off the Liberals, made up entirely of members OF HIS OWN FAMILY! Imagine if they'd got in tonight! I might have barred the windows, actually!”
 
Well, I'm not entirely certain what to make of this.

I'm never good at writing in the mornings.

Basically, inspired by the names of certain Con-Lib electoral alliances in local govt in the 50s and 60s, I started thinking about what would happen if the Liberals had gone before their time, and there was a kind of unfocused Cleggmania searching for Alternatives.
 
Labour – 275
Conservative – 258
+ Ulster Unionist Party – 18
+ National Liberal Party – 1
Scottish Moderate Party – 51
Progressive Party – 39
Citizens’ Party – 9
Communist Party – 6
Independent Labour Party – 3


What happened to Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein, and the SDLP? It looks like UUP swept Northern Ireland, which is highly unlikely.
 

Thande

Donor
Interesting idea and I like the alternate names like ThoughtPad.

I do this myself if I let myself so just be away you probably need to bring the asides in brackets under control or they make the sentences too long and people start to zone out.
 
Interesting idea and I like the alternate names like ThoughtPad.

I do this myself if I let myself so just be away you probably need to bring the asides in brackets under control or they make the sentences too long and people start to zone out.

I do it too and can confirm everyone should heed this.

A nice vignette, though, UM. It's well-written but the subject matter lends itself better to a longer project, I think - the glimpse we get here is almost too little to really take much away beyond 'two party politics spontaneously broke one night'.
 
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