I see your clawlike hands and the glint in your eye, like you’re forever excited at the thought of choking out a labrador and watching the life fade out of its body. I see the smug set of your newly victorious face, rescued from political oblivion by the rise of Boris Johnson’s Golden Dawn. It even sounds like a far-right cult of shit wizards from a bad Elder Scrolls game. You’re back, Priti Patel, entirely unrepentant and just as thoroughly grotesque as ever.
It’s been five minutes and you’re already pledging a war on crime with the sort of authoritarian invective that would make Judge Dredd blush. It’s playing out exactly like the Stallone version; a host of cartoonishly bad actors and a supervillain whose grand plan is to somehow clone 20,000 new lawmen in order to fight the surge in criminality they created in the first place. The only character we’re missing is Rob Schneider, literally the only thing I can think of that would make the coming apocalypse even more unbearable.
The Conservatives are the party of law and order, aren’t they, Priti Patel? That’s why they devastated the police force in the first place, like a resus nurse dosing IV lines with drugs so they can be the first on the scene to provide CPR and look like a hero. You’ve been treated very unfairly by a press that insists on quoting your exact words back at you. All you said was that you were in favour of capital punishment, a sentence which was completely taken out of context. What you were actually saying is that capital punishment gives you the raging horn, but you’d never advocate for it if it got in the way of advancing your career. It’s just a minor moral hurdle. Y’know, like the ministerial code, or basic standards of ethical conduct for elected representatives of the state.
It’s time to go back to traditional Conservative law enforcement, isn’t it? Time to crack down ruthlessly on drug users, despite that never fucking working. Time to crack down on knife crime while ignoring the poverty and complete lack of social infrastructure that could prevent it. Time to feign support for the police, even though they’ve been driven into the ground by the very people who now claim to be their champions. It’s all authority and hard deterrents, typical Tory tactics that achieve very little beyond political grandstanding and keeping Jean in Bedfordshire voting blue.
It’s all a bit predictable, isn’t it, Priti Patel? It’s all words when you much prefer action. Well you’re in charge now, and it’s time to show them just how far you’re willing to go.
I see the conference table, Priti Patel, the sea of old white faces and corporate interests all here to hear you out. This is your bread and butter, isn’t it? Cosying up to lobbyists and following the money, selling your vision, moving the nightmare forwards. You’ve something special to show them today – something new and shiny, a new toy in the arsenal in the war against crime.
I see the doors slide open, and I hear the clanking of metal and the hiss of hydraulics. I see the nuclear warning symbol on an iron pauldron, an amber light wheeling atop it as the robot strides into the room, its sensors bleeping. I see it rest on its haunches, turning left to right, scanning the table full of faces, the miniguns mounted on its arms twitching.
I see the boardroom erupt in applause, Priti Patel, each of them rising to their feet, smiles beaming. I see you bang your hand on the robot’s armour. This bad boy can fit can so many brutally authoritarian algorithms into it, can’t it?
And you’re the one holding the vial, tucked away safely in your jacket pocket.
I see you put your fingers in your ears, Priti Patel, and I see the machine open fire. I see it pivot, thundering out so many bullets that bodies are shorn in half before they even drop to the ground. I see chests, heads, flailing limbs exploded by the sheer weight of bullets. I hear the glass shattering, barely time for screams as your robot slaughters them all.
I smell the cordite and hear the robot’s guns winding down, the purge completed. I see its carapace open, the brain and eyes floating in a tank, a metal hand extending to you to clench and beg.
I see you hand Cain the Nuke, Priti Patel. He’s a good boy and it will stop him tweaking for a few hours. The war on drugs is only just starting, isn’t it? And you’re the general now. Poor Boris and those other clowns at OCP don’t know what they’ve unleashed.
They might be the Old Conservative Party but you’re the law now.
I see you, Priti Patel. I fucking see you.
