Islands in the stream
“Beware of Gods, Communists and beautiful women,” said the Chancellor
He was adored.
Winchester College and Oxford University beckoned and with calm ease, he drifted through both. Even a Stanford MBA he grasped with the settled relaxation of a man whose destiny had been written by his God; Brahma.
His insouciance was what surprised those who met him. Not only was he bright but his chiselled looks and slim demeanour meant that at University he had been ‘Dishy Rishi’.
It was unsurprising that at 1 a.m. this particular morning in 1999, as he sat in the Baroque splendour of the converted Hawksmoor church that had become the library of Lincoln College, that he was approached by a pulchritudinous, tall, blonde woman who chose to sit in the carrel next to him. Her legs were like branches of a beautiful young silver birch, her hair like the gentle lapping of a willow brushing the water and her fingers like the smooth catkins of a hornbeam.
She grasped a large book, which it transpired was a copy of Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe — unusual, but beguiling. In the space between their seats, the dark, large round eyes of the man who could do no wrong met the piercing blue eyes of the curiosity that was the most captivating woman in Oxford.
Much was revealed of her intentions when she spoke with a hypnotic and breathy Russian accent:
“Are you a scholar of Karl Marx?”.
Rishi responded with the suave authenticity of James Bond.
“No, I preferred his brother Groucho.”
This playfulness fell to a silence between them as Rishi realised that this Devi before him could hypnotically toy with his inner soul.
She said to him:
“I do not know this man, how you say, ‘Groucho’, but I have friend who is the new President of my country, he tells me he wants you to work for him…his name is Vladimir. He loves bareback riding and guns.”
The United Kingdom is one of the great Western liberal societies. Defender of freedoms throughout the world and a country renowned for its history and culture based on a Liberal set of values.
But have we all become communists now?
In the space of four months great behemoths of UK history have been overturned. Liberty has been destroyed and The Magna Carta has been ripped up.
We have confined people to their homes, prematurely ended the education of our young, closed our businesses and created an economy based on paying our workers to not work. We have rationed food, shut down the church, closed our theatres, been told our hair must grow long and then ordered to take one hour of exercise a day. A combination of Mao, Hannibal, Hitler and Alexander the Great could never have dreamed of the decline of Great Britain in the manner and speed of the Covid Spring of 2020.
As if that were not enough, like a Soviet spy emerging from his sleeper cell in the City, we have a Chancellor of the Exchequer who wants to pay for our dinner, pay businesses money to continue to employ workers, cut the tax on soft drinks (we cannot let the proletariat consume cheap alcohol as we know what is good for them), subsidise young people by getting them a job and paying for the worker’s homes. Marx (both Karl and Groucho) would be proud.
Not since the Tamworth Manifesto, when Peel promised the Conservative Party would “reform to survive”, has the party ever taken such a dramatic turn, not just in policy but in philosophy as well. Where now are Thatcher, Keith Joseph and the free market economy a young Rishi Sunak must have studied at Lincoln College.
So, is Rishi Sunak a secret Communist plant or someone who has been drinking too much of the limelight and therefore can no longer be restrained from shocking us?
The right of the party need not fear. These are special times, these are times of war and war can forgive those who study Philosophy, Politics and Economics amongst the dreaming spires and go off on a wild adventure crashing through the liberties and freedoms and economic competence of centuries of precedent. Fear not, because hidden in this dramatic state intervention are wings of hope upon which the right of the Conservative Party can cling.
Yes, the early part of this crisis was about unprecedented state intervention, as it was in 1918 and 1939. But explicit in this recent set of announcements is the reality that to heal and grow an economy it is tax cuts that will take us to safety. Weaning the child off the suckling breast of the state is now the imperative and tax cuts are the ‘solids’ Nanny must now feed the child so that the nipples of state can recover their bloom from the flaccidity of incessant consumption. Alleluia, the great God Sunak has discovered the modern economic miracle — low tax creates wealth for the nation.
Let us pray for the nation:
“Hail Rishi, master of all he surveys, God of hope, God of Glory, the bringer of lower taxes. Beloved by all, he has cast off his Communist past and set fair his destiny to become the nation’s Brahma, the Supreme Leader, the darling of the right, beloved by tall Russian women wandering the dark nights of Oxford recruiting comrades for the Russian State. May the Adonis of modern Conservatism now take up his monetarist future and forever rest his body in peace in the sure and certain hope that he will rise in splendour for the good of all the nation; Amen.”
First published on the Nudge Factory website 9 July 2020