!*@*ing Cancelled

For fuck sake it was meant to be a joke. ‘Show your human side’, his advisors had said. ‘Try and get a little closer to the people you represent.’ That’d worked out well! Not that he’d let the keyboard warriors have their way. So troublesome these armchair political activists, so terribly, terribly tiresome. To be honest though he found it somewhat amusing to have clearly riled so many; to have caused so much upset amongst the  hoi polloi. Why do they bother? Some of the dullards don't have much else to do, he supposes. Most of them have likely never done so much as a day’s work in their life. Then there are the know-it-alls, the ‘eminents’ with a few letters after their name who think this means that everyone needs to hear their opinions on everything and anything. Loons, the lot of them. Maybe his comment had been a tad near the knuckle. Possibly it was just a bit offensive to some. But honestly there was no need for him to trend on twitter for nearly two days because of it. How utterly alarming to discover there are so many crazy cranks out there. The women are the worst of course. The feminists, YUCK, the original woke snowflakes.

He is pleased with the way he’d fought back. He’d quote tweeted quite a few of the idiot nobodies and caused a pile on or two. This was satisfying but mostly his attempts had led to more hysterical critique; more attempts to shut him up, frighten him off, cancel him, him, cancel him #FFS. So then he’d taken to blocking the lot of them, not before reporting them, which the intern he’d got to do job for him said led to at least a few getting suspended from the site. Win, win really as it’d kept the over-enthusiastic poodle busy for a while. A nice lad really for a grammar school boy.

Seriously though who do these trolls think they are? How dare they? He’d said as much to Charlie Stayt on BBC Breakfast, Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain, Kay Burley and Sky News and most recently Krishnan Guru-Murphy on Channel 4 News.   

Zoom interviews over for the day he hurries to shower and change for the dinner across town he is due at in just over an hour. He is looking forward to, what he know will be, a delicious meal and the cheque for a few after dinner quips will more than pay for the luxury long week-end away he is planning with his latest long-legged, brown-eyed distraction from the trials of his daily life. If only his constituents knew how hard he worked for them. Just a little recognition, a tiny bit of gratitude; that is all he wants. It isn't too much to ask for, is it? He isn’t planning a late night as tomorrow he has both a golf and a late lunch date, after another zoom interview for the Jeremy Vine Show and before his scheduled speech on ‘Internet Bullying’ in the House of Commons. That should give the oiks on the opposite benches something to grumble about.

Buffed and fortified for a gastronomically satisfying and financially lucrative, if, most probably, boring, evening with a generous shot of gin he’s stepping into the waiting car when his phone rings. It’s his PA. Why is the stupid girl bothering him now? She knows his schedule.

‘What?’, he barks.

‘Sorry, sorry Sir, it’s just I thought you’d want to know this. Several news-print editors have been in touch, including one who works for a Sunday supplement. They all want either to interview you or for you to write something for them. All along the lines of ‘Why I’m being cancelled by the thought police just for speaking my mind.’

Reminded again of the injustice of it all and how hard done by he is the Rt Hon Ian Vincent Edwin Plenty, MP for Lower Expectations sighs and pours himself another slug of sprits before closing his weary eyes and sinking back into the comfort of the luxury limousine seat.