I see your the red-rimmed eyes of your swarthy face, like a wax rubbing of a walnut stapled to a mannequin. You’re cantankerousness personified, a grumpy knuckle of a man, never afraid to let your simmering rage boil over and scald whoever you decide to consider a petulant pain in the arse that day. You’ve served up more burns than a fresh Greggs to the hungry and impatient; now it’s time for a final ‘fuck you’ to Boris and his executive overreach on the way out the door.
In the British parliamentary system, it turns out the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups. The executive, who instigate crimes, and the legislature who persecute them. These are their stories. It’s been a real week for bore and ordaaaaaah, hasn’t it, John Bercow?
In truly shocking scenes it turns out that serial liar and misrepresenter extraordinaire Boris Johnson might be a smidgeon dishonest. In a hilarious turn of events that’s left English brexiteers clutching their pearls, disgusted without any irony that a court across the Scottish border could hold their political system in such thrall, the wheels of his Trumpian Trojan horse have once again been buckled. It’s almost starting to feel like our series of checks and balances may yet threaten to actually impede him. I’m half convinced the Scottish judges are only fucking with Johnson to teach the South what it feels like for a bit and the Supreme Court may yet disagree. However as it currently stands, Boris’ first few weeks have left him with a bloodier nose than Fabio on a rollercoaster.
If Boris can’t get an election, it’s his own fault for alienating the House. If he can’t get approval for his Brexit plans, it’ll be his own fault for alienating the House. If he’s ripped to pieces after the Supreme Court forces him to reopen Parliament… you get the picture. You have no right to govern on pomp and arrogance alone, particularly when you’ve shat your majority into your hands and clapped. British politics has been a horrifying psychodrama of late but there is some small glimmer of hope in the House’s refusal to be bullied by Johnson’s thuggish inflammation of tensions. Quite what will be left standing after Dominic Cummings has finished smashing up the Lego set and making pew-pew noises remains to be seen but at least he’s not doing it entirely unopposed.
You’re at the front of the efforts, John Bercow, impressively resolute in your determination to remind him that regardless of the disingenuous wailing and gnashing of teeth, our system is still very much that of a parliamentary democracy. Until Boris secures an actual majority he cannot simply do what he likes. To combat a PM who gleefully indicates that he won’t obey the law requires MPs to put country before party and a Speaker willing to bear the ire of a government without scruples. Handy, then, that you’re a belligerent little fucker quite willing to overreach in return.
I see you, John Bercow, bent and broken by the ordeal of your terrible journey. I feel the overwhelming heat of the cavern, the walls lit by the glow of magma erupting into the air from the broiling chasm below. I see you hobble across the ledge, clutching your awful burden. Such a heavy load for a small man to carry. No-one expected a man of your stature to carry on, ridiculed as you were. All their jokes ever did was harden your resolve.
It’s been a long and brutal path, the horrors of bloodshed past now long behind you. Many of the Fellowship have fallen. Jo Swinson, corrupted as the yellow men of Gondor always are by the call of power, turned on you at Parth Galen. Corbyn the Grey refused to let the Balrees-Mogg pass and fell into shadow. Many others, too, presumably crushed under the weight of strained metaphors and the encroaching darkness.
You yourself have stumbled, John Bercow. You’ve been rotten to those who walked alongside you, snapping and snarling at their good intentions, the precious clutched to your chest. It’s all led you here, staring over the brink, the fires of Mount Yellowhammer roaring below you.
One Brexit to divide them all and in the darkness bind them. Time to let it go, John Bercow, and cast No Deal into the pit where it belongs.
I see the pale creature bound on all fours towards you, leaping on your back, snarling and spitting as it grabs at your hands. Dominic Cummings is here, wisps of hair clinging to his grey skull, fury in his eyes. For years, the precious has been all he has, his whole reason for living. He wants it. He needs it, precious.
I see you recoil, John Bercow, blood spraying from the stumps of your fingers. I see the pallid, awful little creature fall, tumbling downwards into the inferno. He can have it. He can have the delirious little grin it gives him as it all burns up around him.
I see you, John Bercow. I fucking see you.
