CHEQUERED

In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.

They'd done it. They'd finally got rid of the "blonde pig". In many ways the systematic destruction of the Prime Minister's reign in office had come to more closely resemble that of the collective murder of the bespectacled, over talkative and hugely intelligent Piggy from William Goldman's novel The Lord Of The Flies.

Now he had been beaten by the political elite along with the establishment media and the jealous haters within his own party, all he could think to do was to hold an enormous party at the height of the British summer in the historical 16th century house of Chequers which had always offered respite to Prime Ministers, mostly in times of crisis. There were numerous crises abounding currently for the country and yet the caretaker PM felt he had been rudely and unceremoniously sabotaged by so many warring factions lately he had lost some of his appetite to cave into any more of the finger waggers and their demands for him to be something he wasn't. Managing the weather wasn't something that held a particular fascination for him.

Accused of blatantly ignoring COBRA meetings to nanny the general public about the "extreme weather", the Prime Minister preferred instead to enjoy, at least to his mind, a well deserved official party after the rather pitiful cakegate affair that had played some part in his downfall. Besides, he thought to himself, why not go out confirming his enemies' worse prejudices. They all hated him anyway.

Call it delusion or arrogance or both but Mr Johnson even invited many of his political betrayers to the Chequers event, preferring to observe in plainsight their outright treachery over drinks. "Revenge is best served in a glass," the departing Prime Minister quipped as he popped a cork of the finest champagne without any regard for taking someone's eye out in the jam packed room.

Unlike the brief dream of JFK'S White House as Camelot for a new American golden age, Mr Johnson's own dream of  the "sunny uplands" for Brexit Britain had been derided by many within the party as being more like "Shamalot".

But back in 2019, when the existential threat of a bearded communist in socialist clothing threatened to turn the United Kingdom into North Korea, Mr Johnson had done his bit to rescue the nation from commiting an act of collective self harm and secured himself an 80 seat majority in Parliament for his efforts before heralding tidings of joy for Christmas.

There were perhaps just a few hallowed weeks when the United Kingdom resembled a magical kingdom, that was at least until the arrival of a highly tranmissible virus from China managed to upend all of Johnson's hopeful ambitions for the nation and the prediction of a roaring 2020's.

It was as if the entire optimistic proposition of his vision of the future had been snuffed out by a thick heavy blanket that practically smothered any hope of positivity or hope for a year or two. Finally, the long Covid suffering and maskless PM stumbled back out into the light, hoping like much of the British public that things could return to normal. But there would be no returning to anything remotely resembling normal from now on.

It was the dawn of a new age and possibly a new dark age at that. An Orwellian newspeak was being written by the day by the woke blob where it appeared that the hugely divisive zeitgeist of identity politics was becoming a dress rehearsal preparation for the new age of Metaverse avatars soon to come. In the future everyone would be shape shifting across numerous guises but for Mr Johnson's numerous enemies he had only one identity: that of the regressive Etonian buffoon.

There was a great irony to the common misconception of Boris Johnson as a right wing conservative when he far more closely resembled a centrist liberal. He was, in many ways, as guilty of transhumanist utopian thinking as the sillicon valley robber barons that controlled the internet. Nevertheless, even with all of his green tendrilled policies and attempt to be fair minded and fully inclusive he could never escape the comparison to being Donald Trump's long lost transatlantic bastard child.

The dream was over for Mr Johnson and for many who never believed in what they considered to be blatant lies and endless bluff and buffonery; they were almost as gleeful seeing the back of Mr Johnson as they were of Thatcher when she was also brought down from enemies within her own party.

But having had his own brush with mortality after becoming severely ill with COVID19, one thing Mr Johnson had found protected him from the lacerating slings and arrows of outrageous fortune was the recognition that life is fleeting and that it would be a mistake to ever forget that in light of nearly losing his. Of course, many believed that his near fatal dance with the virus was a lie and so even his scrape with death was doubted, invalidating his claim to being able to see a bigger perspective on things beyond career politics. In the eyes of his haters he would always be the problem and until he was removed and publicly humiliated then his existence would continue to cause perpetual offence.

To those who hated this "shagger blagger", his legacy resembled an ice cream factory's worth of shit, and one to be voided from the history books altogether like a year zero for Britain's ever pervasive cultural revolution currently running roughshod over everything to do with the nation's complicated past.

And so, as the sun blazed on the grounds of Chequers and Mache Dich Mein Herze Rein by Bach could be heard across the perfectly manicured garden, he drank his cares away and only once did a fleeting sense of melancholy strike at him, gently piercing his rarely mentioned heart.

He'd been watching the soft summer breezes flow invisibly through the green branches of the oak tree close by the historic house as a quotation by his Greek hero Pericles came to his mind.

"Trees, though they are cut and lopped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again."