Ministerial diary Day 6

An emergency has been declared. The tiger is officially declared a ‘category red’.

New measures in my Bill mean that the governance of the country no longer requires the full parliament to sit in a category red situation. As a result my Bill no longer has to go through the Lords, where thousands of objections to it would have been made, along with enormous delays and doubtless many concessions and amendments. Instead, a Committee of five peers debated the Bill, and they were all Cabinet members.

The Bill passed through the Lords stages in a record five minutes and 30 seconds, with no amendments whatsoever.

A representative of the Queen is on hand to declare Royal Assent for the Bill and that’s it, another record, I have been a minister for less than a week and I have taken a Bill through parliament.

xxx

Evening

To Downing Street for a victory dinner. The Bill has been passed, my Bill is a Bill no more, it is now an Act of parliament and there is much jubilation all round.

Even Buster and my other bodyguards, too many to name individually, are given cans of beer to toast our victory. All of the cabinet’s security teams are here, several hundred altogether, a noisy and boisterous bunch.

Our dinner was more formal, though the champagne flowed.

The very first course was lobster and to make things entertaining we were tasked with choosing and catching our own from the Downing Street fishtank. Alex Daniels MP was the last to catch his and took several minutes aimlessly flapping around the tank with his lobster net. Eventually one of the chefs helped him lure the lobster into its entrapment.

“Outwitted by a lobster,” The Man whispered in my ear, to my great amusement.

“It’s lucky there are no lobsters on the Labour front bench,” I quipped back and was delighted to generate a laugh, subtly disguised behind a cough.

Alex was most gracious about it and laughed at his own clumsiness. He can relax, he knows that the Man trusts him, a Tory in Lib Dem trousers he poses no threat as he could never stand for the Tory leadership, and is therefore a useful, albeit useless, ally. If I were Prime Minister, of course, I’d make the lobster Treasury Secretary before I’d go anywhere near Alex Daniels.

We seated at the table, thirty of the most important and powerful people in the land and me. I was honoured beyond words to be in this company.

While we were awaiting the lobsters The Man stood up, raised his glass and proposed a toast. “This is a landmark moment in political history,” he said to cheers, “and the man responsible is with us today. I give you the Minister for Tiger Protection.” I rose and to a bow to a warm round of applause from everyone. I would go down in history The Man said.

There were over a dozen courses altogether, I lost count after the third or fourth starter. Midway through the dinner was interrupted for the entertainments, which included a troop of clowns, can-can dancers and a right wing comedian who mostly made jokes about the tiger eating Muslims. The Tories round the tabled laughed loudly at his act, though us Liberals were less comfortable. It’s all right to think it, but to say it out loud, in company!

I sat next to the Chancellor who was explaining how the Act had already made him a rich man, well, a richer man. He had used the Act’s powers to seize an acre of derelict land in Hounslow and had already sold it on to a Taiwanese investment company for £1.7 billion. “I’m almost as rich as The Man now,” he said, laughing happily.

“You’ve done well,” I said, “the ink’s hardly dry on the Act, that sort of deal usually takes months to finalise.”

He laughed as if I had told a great joke.

Towards the end of the evening The Man took me to one side and hinted strongly that a permanent post would be mine at the next reshuffle.

“What if the tiger isn’t caught by then?” I asked.

“Oh I expect it’ll be over any day now,” he said, “your period in government will be over, but don’t worry,” he put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye, “you can trust me to ensure that you’re back in the government in no time.”

At the end of the night Buster had to be carried to the car, drunk as a Lord (and the Lords around the table were pretty sizzled I can tell you). My other guards were nearly as bad, it was lucky we didn’t come across the tiger on the way home.