COBRA

“It’s ridiculous isn’t it? I mean, we’re fucking members of the Cabinet and we have to stand in the corridor like naughty schoolchildren.”

I said nothing, not wanting to be overheard complaining, but I was equally angry. Davies and me, and he and I alone, were forced to stand in the corridor for the course of the entire emergency Cabinet meeting, which was taking place in a bunker underneath Downing Street. The room was designed five years ago when the Cabinet only contained 26 members, instead of the 28 we have now, hence the need for two of us to stand at the door.

“I mean, even the fucking Cabinet Secretary has a seat, and he’s a civil servant. It makes you wonder why my constituents flocked to the polls in their thousands to express their affection for me when I could have just taken a cosy do nothing post in the civil service and waited for promotion to take its course.”

“I wonder what it’s about,” I said, keen to change the subject. “This is the first time I’ve ever had a meeting underground, even after the IRA attack on Downing Street we didn’t go and hide downstairs. It must be something pretty serious.”

“I expect the Chancellor’s finally realised how much the public hate him.”

“It’s nice to be somewhere different though, I get tired of always meeting in Downing Street. This was part of the suite that Churchill used, you know. I think it was just a storeroom, but still, it’s steeped in history.”

“What, an abandoned cellar? The sewers are old too, it doesn’t make them a historic landmark. It’s a rickety old tip too, those walls have more cracks in them than the coalition, it could collapse at any moment, look at the ceiling, about as fragile as our economy.”

“It does amaze me how skilled you are at teasing out analogies at the expense of our alliance. Anyway, we’d better hope the ceiling doesn’t choose this moment to collapse. It could kill the entire government in one go and take out enough seats to leave Labour in power.”

“It’s Milliband’s best chance of becoming PM.”

We both laughed at Alun’s joke, even though it was completely untrue. The latest polls suggest that getting killed en masse in a tunnel collapse would be the first popular initiative the government would have taken in two years.

We were interrupted by the PM, who finally decided to explain what we were all doing here.

“Thank you all for coming to this emergency Cabinet meeting. I expect you’re wondering why we are holding the meeting in this underground bunker.”

“Not half,” Alun muttered under his breath.

The PM continued. “The Secretary of State for Defence has today passed me satellite evidence of unexplained activity at the outer reaches of our solar system.”

There was a pause, as the various members of the Cabinet tried to grasp the meaning of this. The PM continued.

“At the moment the sightings are officially referred to as UFOs. However, officials at the Ministry of Defence believe these observations could not have been caused by any naturally-occurring phenomenon and that they are evidence of alien activity, most likely a very significant level of alien activity. Discussions with the American Secretary of State have confirmed our concerns and we are joining the Americans in taking the precaution of securing key government members and officials in safe bunkers until we have a better understanding of the nature of the ...”

I will never know what the PM was going to say next. He was interrupted by a loud crack and groan, as if the walls around him were talking. I looked at the walls of the chamber to see a thick crack spreading all the way across.

The Cabinet Secretary started mumbling something about emergency evacuation (he was always a mumbler) but it was too late. The first rock fell on Vince Cable, and he looked up with a start, as if waking from a fifty-year slumber. It was the last thing I saw before all the lights went out.

Me and Davies managed to leap into the corridor behind us and escape, just the pillars and walls gave way and the ceiling collapsed. The rest of the Cabinet were buried in a pile of rubble.

“Fuck!”

“We’d better run Alun,” I said, “we don’t know how stable this corridor is.”

“Run? Where to? We’re a mile underground.”

“These corridors go on for miles. I don’t suppose you have a torch on you by any chance?”

“Er, hang on, I think I’ve got an app for that. Hold still, I can’t run and search my phone at the same time. There.”

We had light. Davies swivelled the thin beam around to enable us to take in our surroundings – a surprisingly wide corridor, with no interesting features, no sign of an exit. We ran on, seeing no further than the narrow slit of light allowed.

We could hear nothing. There was nothing to indicate that the rock-fall had spread, no agonised screams of dying ministers, no sound of aliens zapping the earth. We ran on, in near darkness, for what seemed forever, until I had to pause for breath. Thirty-two years of political life are not ideal training when you’re running for your life, the long lunches and dinners are an essential means of cultivating alliances and friendships, but do nothing for your 1,500 meters.

We took the opportunity of the break to search the walls for signs of an exit.

“These tunnels are very wide. What are they for?”

“I looked at the plans once, during the cold war. They’re 20 meters wide in place, over 2,000 miles of tunnels, and that’s just the main veins. The plan was that if there was ever a nuclear attack all the great and the good would be kept safe underground. There were plans for the emergency evacuation of 3,000 civil servants.”

“Good God. A world inhabited solely by civil servants. What sort of perverted mind comes up with that as a solution to apocalypse?”

“Well,” I said, “civil servants, obviously. They were always nagging us to build them nuclear shelters. I think they liked the idea that come Armageddon they’d be in charge. No normal people to get in the way of their mad plans.”

“You know Sir Geoffrey, I’ve just had an astonishing thought. One of us will have to become Prime Minister.”

Alun was totally right. There is no precedent for what happened when the PM and 25 other members of the Cabinet died in the same rock-fall, but as the two surviving members of the government it would be up to us to take charge until a leadership election could be held.

“Well you always wanted to be leader Alun. I won’t stand against you. Just as long as you find a place for me in your cabinet.”

“Not me! You’re the senior minister, you were in the cabinet while I was still at Eton.”

“I rather thought you wanted to be leader.” I said. “I’m sure we’ve had a conversation to that effect.”

“Under normal circumstances yes. But not leading a government that has just lost its government and is about to launch into an intergalactic war. I was rather hoping for, you know, taking charge just as we were coming out of recession, a couple of populist tax-cuts, a few bills attacking immigration, not burying the decomposing remnants of the coalition government before being fried alive by ET.”

“You think it’s serious?” I asked, surprised. I had Davies pegged as one of the saner members of the Cabinet, which, admittedly, isn’t saying a great deal.

“Don’t be fooled by Star Trek, if there’s a fleet of alien craft out there then they haven’t come all this way just to say ‘Hi!’. You know how much it costs just to launch a probe to Mars, think what sort of investment it would take to cross the universe. No business or government would spend that if there wasn’t profit in it. Any aliens are here to plunder, and if they’re capable of crossing the universe to get here you can bet they can squish us like so many bugs.”

“Wow. You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”

“No, I’ll let you take the helm for a month or so, until Boris is ready. Or until the Earth is reduced to a husk of rubble.”

“Same thing, some might say. What is the collective noun for aliens?”

“I don’t know. An envy of aliens – that’s a play on the green man line. Or how about a circus.”

“Circus? Good god Alun, your collective nouns are as mad as your policies.”

“I was thinking of the travelling aspect of alien invaders, not their entertainment skills.”

The conversation was going nowhere, which was an indication that it was time to move on. We walked for another three hours, without any sign of life, let alone an exit, before stopping for another much needed rest.

“You know, there’s a lot of undeveloped potential here,” said Davies. “2,000 miles of tunnels. Think of the money we could make renting it out.”

“Who to? Moles? Hobbits?”

“Business. Think of it, all prime location in the middle of the city.”

“I hate to dampen your plans Alun, but I feel I should remind you that the reason we’re running around these corridors is that the room we were in just collapsed. You know, the rock-fall that killed the government. That somehow slipped your mind?”

“But we’re just talking about office workers John, businesses could afford the risk. Workers are cheap.”

“Did I just say you could be PM?”

“Think of the money we’d make. We could pay of the deficit. We’d have money for tax cuts, money for tabloid-friendly spending. It’s a total no-brainer.”

“Oh my god, you are actually serious aren’t you?”

“I shall raise it at the next cabinet meeting. Oh!”

Alun’s remark was met with silence. Neither of us could think of anything to say. Wordlessly we moved on, like a circus of aliens wandering the empty caverns of the universe.

After another hour, completely out of the blue, we came across a ladder leading to the world above. There were no signs, nothing to indicate where we were. But it was freedom, it was away from the depths of the underworld.

With a nod to each other, as if conspiring in some unspoken decision, we climbed up, into the unknown.