JANUARY 2008 Jacqui Smith nips out for a kebab in
a bid to look Modern, but stupidly reveals that she’s scared of being stabbed. This gives us an idea and we begin arranging similar outings for Dave on the mean streets of North Kensington where he is snapped in a variety of Ordinary places including the late night Spar (the food shop, not the Thai massage place on the corner, obviously). As Northern Rock goes wrong I predict recession — not bad for a girl!
FEBRUARY Fly-on-the-wall documentary revealing how Dave eats breakfast only gets mixed reviews. Undaunted, we begin the now legendary process of finessing our historic commitment to match Labour spending plans. Dave also shows heroic strength and decisiveness by almost immediately withdrawing the whip from Derek Conway for using his Commons allowance to pay his son to lie in bed. All our MPs rack their brains to make sure they haven’t inadvertently done something similar. On the Modern front, Dave speaks movingly for the first time about his vegetable patch and gets caught cycling dynamically through a red light!
MARCH We launch deeply moral campaign to remove the Speaker after it emerges that his wife takes black cabs everywhere at taxpayer expense. Everyone at Tory HQ goes through their latest expenses claims and takes out black cab receipts. Focus grouping shows the public now supports tax rises and banning City bonuses. You can’t argue with the punters, so we decide to have A Bit Of A Re-think. Mr Lansley goes too far and makes a fool of himself by promising to increase health spending. As does Mr Hammond by claiming we are not going to cut taxes. Silly silly! Gids jeopardises our Mayoral campaign by taking Boris to the hairdressers. On the plus side, Dave encounters a great white shark while swimming in the latest Vilebrequins and Little Al Duncan announces the Tory’s first ever Civil (gay) Partnership!
APRIL Our clampdown on Big Business continues apace with fighting talk from Dave about how we will clobber evil fat cats in the decadent moral cesspit that is the Golden Mile. Tax cuts are definitely dead. Our new watchwords are fiscal rules and stability. Gids not happy and doesn’t put the slightest effort into performing this important U-turn. Jed reminds him that if he doesn’t want to Be The Change, we can always do a bit of change for him, so to speak. Nick Clegg reveals he has slept with 30 women. Minor panic about whether or not Dave should do same but as we cannot come up with an ideal number which would chime with Middle Britain we decide to leave it a mystery. MAY Bozza becomes London Mayor and the buzz throughout Britain is of the unstoppable new force that is The Conservatives! Dave now a dead cert to enter Downing Street whenever Gordon has the good grace to call an election and get lost. Gids threatens to curb the power of the unions, jeopardising months of painstaking cosying up to union bosses. Can he not get anything right? Or should I say left?! We triumph spectacularly in Crewe and Nantwich by-election after voters decide they don’t want to clamp down on rich people after all and in fact like nothing more than a toff in a blazer!
JUNE Now That We Are Modernised Jed goes to live in California, drawing to a close an historic era of Change and leaving us to service the cappuccino machine ourselves. Gary, our cockney head of comms, takes charge and immediately switches it off. Mrs Spelperson sets a Christian example by agreeing never to show her face in public again after she is rumbled for paying her nanny out of Commons’ expenses. We launch inquiry into which of her enemies framed her but as the list of suspects grows ever longer even Mr Grieve can’t solve the mystery and we have to abandon it. DD, on a major civil liberties high, loses it totally and resigns. He sets up the Office of the Former Shadow Home Secretary (or OffShush) whose remit is ‘to fight everything’.
JULY Our Leader’s historic meeting with Barack Obama is hailed as the most significant international alliance ever forged. Obama also meets Brown but no one notices. Dave goes on Holiday to Cornwall and is photographed in a pair of ripped shorts looking Modern, Relaxed and In Love With Sam. Gordon goes on holiday in a suit and looks like a plonker. Nothing can stop us now!
AUGUST Lily Allen becomes an adviser on Tory policy and days later Jed tells us we have a new set of spending plans. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Miliband’s Vision statement puts a shiver down our spines, but only briefly cos he turns out to be useless! SEPTEMBER Dylan Jones writes brilliantly about his Year With Dave and his book revealing what kitchen roll the Conservative Leader buys is hailed universally by critics as ‘more important than Hayek’. We all study the Labour leadership rules and the dazzling new pin-up of the Right, Sarah Palin, teaches us that there’s no shame in putting lipstick on a pig! Or is it a pitbull?
OCTOBER Thousands of ecstatic conference delegates cheer Dave to the rafters in our traditional homeland of Birmingham. Conference approves the motion: ‘Dave is always right and should be allowed to get on with doing whatever he wants.’ Unfortunately, next day banks go into freefall and the Death of Capitalism is confirmed. Our ban on champagne is extended to smiling and Dave and Gids go back to London to pursue a bipartisan approach of supporting the government for the good of Britain. For reasons known only to himself however, Gids then decides to take on Mandelson in a bloody battle of poisonous briefings. Everyone in the office places bets on how quickly Mandy will have Gids’s guts for garters. Wonky Tom wins with a prediction of three days. Gids also gets the blame for the FTSE crashing after he claims the pound is doomed. It really hasn’t been his year, has it?
NOVEMBER Obama secures an historic victory for Compassionate Conservatism! Dave gets on with our commitment to support the government in a downturn by launching a withering attack on Gordon’s Big Clunking Debt. We decide not to condemn Ross and Brand on the basis that it will only invite more Bullingdon people to come out of the woodwork and claim, ridiculously, that Dave and Gids played all sorts of obscene pranks on people when they were Young and UnModern. Focus groups show our brand contaminated by yachts and tailcoats and public seem to believe Labour invented tax cuts. Gids only keeps his job after signing a contract promising to travel goat class on planes. Ouch!
DECEMBER With Gids in hiding Dave turns to a powerful triumvirate of big hitters to advise him on the economy: Oliver Letwin, Al Murray and John Redwood — nanu nanu! Armed with their invaluable advice, we formally ditch our commitment to match Labour spending plans and our pledge to share the proceeds of growth between bla and bla, or whatever it was! Gordon unveils taxes on the rich, which we can’t oppose, obviously, and Dave reveals that we were planning spending cuts all along. We are now the party of thrift. To underline this, Dave is photographed looking miserable outside Woolworths. I would say Merry Christmas but I think we all know that’s not party policy.
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