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It had all started quite simply, as the bandwagon of Back to Basics had rolled on culling various member of the party - some hotel clerk or other with a good memory had spilt the beans on John and Edwina. Never mind that it had been 10 years ago, they'd still got Major, he might have held out if Edwina hadn't sung like a canary to the News of the Screws when faced with it all, but the men in grey suits had made a call. He had sung in his bath that night, it had been a very jolly evening well worth a better bottle than Lanson Black Label.

Then the jockeying for position had begun and the fur had started to fly, there had always been rumours about the exotic Secretary of State for Transport, but the snaps from a very dubious Belgian club had caused him to stand aside. Hurd had been next, there were a number of people who had been at School with him who revealed why he'd been called Hitler Hurd, nothing really bad to be honest, but none was willing to have a flogger on board. Some of his support had peeled off to Dorrell, but some of Dorrell's very dubious political positions at University had turned up. It was almost as if the newspapers were enjoying themselves at the expense of the Tory hierarchy and digging through their safes of interesting material. An unpaid Access Card bill was a mere bagatelle compared to all this.

By the time the nominations had closed, Michael Dobbs had commented that sometimes events came rather too close to fiction for reality. The contest came down to himself or Cuddly Ken and there was no way that Ken could ever get the job with the Tory electorate.

He had become Prime Minister after eighteen months in the wilderness, revenge was indeed a dish best eaten cold and it had been very tasty, although having to appoint half of Ward 8 from Broadmoor as ministers had been tricky. Thank goodness the Civil Service had put their foot down about Marlow.

Private Eye had celebrated his apotheosis by changing from their Secret Diary format to "Tory Fags and Booze" advertising leaflets, with Lanson Black Label and Raffles cigarettes always on special offer. It wasn't very funny, well except the "Spock's special offer" bit, where his hapless Chancellor was usually to be found flogging off something ludicrous for a bargain price.

Everything had bumbled along from then on, he'd managed to patch things up with Sir James Goldsmith and promised a referendum, but the loss of the worst of the wets to the LibDems and in the case of Temple-Morris to Labour had cost him his majority very quickly. He'd had to rely on various forms of Ulster Unionists for the last few months which had restrained what he could do easily. However, the economy was recovering, he'd been right about the Green Shoots and even Redwood couldn't fuck that up. So, he kept on hoping that the poll ratings would as well. Not a chance, they had slumped down to the low 20's and stayed there whilst Blair was in the low-50s'.ed

Of course, the Prime Minister should have a safe seat and his seat had disappeared from under him, a victim of the boundary changes. The replacement seat looked dodgy to him, crawling with Liberal Councillors. So he'd thought that the quest for a new seat would be quite simple, but it turned out not to be so. He, as a sitting Prime Minister, had LOST a selection contest - Blair had a field day with that one at PMQ's.

However, when the day came and the Unionists decided to abstain in person and Blair led his troops through the lobbies to take down a Government, something had to be done and CCO could fix things. He'd wanted Witney, but Hurd had informed him he'd stand against him.

So they parachuted him into Harrogate and Knaresborough where the selectorate were happy to have him- mind you most of them were gaga. It seemed nice enough, wealthy, middle class and with a 12,000 majority, but there were problems. The previous MP had spent 23 years doing absolutely fuck all, the activists were generally elderly and the organisation needed the humane killer. To back it up, there was a chippy headteacher with what seemed like the help of every beardie-wierdie in North Yorkshire running a very active campaign.

The election, despite the nice weather for September, had not gone well. The polls had remained dismal, Blair didn't put a foot wrong, attempts to expose the Reds in the Bed just washed off the public. As Tim Bell put it, "the public have had enough of us and it would take Scargill as leader to shift them and then they'd go to Pantsdown". So he'd concentrated on his seat, not many people seemed to want him to visit anyway, but the horde of helpers promised by CCO had never turned up whilst there were mini-busloads of Liberals every day. By the time polling day arrived, he really wasn't sure that 12,000 was enough, the early stages of the count showed quickly it wasn't.

However, his agent had informed him, it was time to face the music, he lost by nine thousand. It was a rowdy crowd out there, mainly of Liberals who knew they had won. He could hear them singing Je Ne Regrette Rien, little sparrows they were not. However, from what he'd heard from other counts, at least half the Cabinet were going down with him.

As he stepped out from the curtain, the Liberals unveiled a large banner

IF IT ISN'T HURTING IT ISN'T WORKING - GOODBYE NORMAN

Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont stepped out to become the first Prime Minister to lose his seat in an election since Ramsay MacDonald.
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