Larry: The Untold Tail - Chapter Five

Chapter Five — Brexit, Boris, Bullshit and Bye-Bye Dave

I’m not going to lie — I was secretly hoping to skip all of this out completely and hope no one would notice, but it’s pretty difficult to gloss over more than five years and get away with it.

So, in full disclosure, I have had a decent drink to take the edge off, but nothing too ridiculous.

Anyway, here we go….

Dave won the 2015 election with an outright majority. Typical Dave style, he was exceptionally pleased with himself, basking in the applause and soaking up every compliment — whilst blissfully ignoring the hard reality.

The competition was dismal.

Labour could have had a strong candidate, but years earlier, rather than selecting the intelligent, likeable, more charismatic David Miliband, for some reason they backed his brother Ed.

The only realistic way for Ed to have pulled off a victory was if he’d literally never been allowed out in public.

It became almost an inevitability that every appearance he made would turn into a spectacle of embarrassing gaffes, awkward missteps, and cringe-worthy moments.

If you ask me, not that anyone ever did — those “Save Our Bacon” headlines were a bit harsh. To the outside world, it appeared that Ed couldn’t even eat a simple bacon sandwich without looking like a complete twat.

But, in all fairness, he’d been stitched up — it wasn’t reported anywhere that someone had just shouted…

“Oi, Ed… Dave probably put his cock in that pig’s mouth.”

So that left just Dave’s chum Cleggy, and frog-face Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Nick’s betrayal of his voters was made abundantly clear at the ballot box — his party was decimated — reduced from a respectable fifty-seven MPs to a miserable eight.

UKIP achieved its best performance, securing nearly four million votes, replacing the Liberal Democrats as the third most popular party by vote share — but due to the electoral system, they’d only won one seat.

Within the same hour the following morning, Miliband, Clegg and Farage had all resigned as party leaders.

But whatever the numbers on the final scoreboard suggested, it had become increasingly obvious that something significant was happening — the country was changing direction, and rather quickly.

But, as always, nobody thought to ask me where it might be heading.

I’d been at No.10 over four years now and had developed a fairly simple theory about politicians and their promises.

Never trust one.

Not because every one is necessarily dishonest — although a lot of them certainly are, but it’s more because politicians have a remarkable ability, especially when campaigning or while in opposition, of making promises that suit them at the time; only to discover a year or two down the line that those pledges are actually far more difficult to practically deliver.

And Dave was about to find that out the hard way.

Europe had been looming on the horizon for many years, and it was impossible for Dave to continue ignoring it. Even within his own party, a vocal and increasingly impatient faction wanted Britain out of the EU. And even though Farage had resigned as leader, both he and UKIP were making a serious amount of noise.

Nigel was fucking everywhere.

You couldn’t turn on the television or open a newspaper without seeing him.

There he was, man of the people, ex-commodities trader and broker, living in a £4m West London townhouse — pint in hand, telling anyone who’d listen that Britain was finished — it was nothing like it used to be and it was such a terrible shame.

Somehow Nigel had managed to take the irritating, loudmouth, know-it-all prick at your local pub, the one who won’t shut the hell up — who thinks he’s right about everything and everyone else is always wrong — and turned that into an actual political strategy.

Wanker or not (definitely wanker), it was still impressive.

Nigel knew the things that resonated with people — understood how to trigger them emotionally and prey upon their fears.

And despite very much being one, and spending considerable time on TV talking politics — he fashioned himself as the bloke who wasn’t a politician and the voice for the ordinary person.

All the while living in a £4m townhouse which is strikingly far removed from ordinary.

It was so ridiculous.

It’s literally like me saying…. I’m just an “ordinary cat.”

Still, Dave had made a promise and there was going to be a referendum.

Remain wanted Britain to stay in the EU.

Leave wanted Britain to leave.

It sounds straightforward enough, right?… Well, it was anything but.

Within weeks it became very obvious that nobody knew what any of it actually meant. And it was at this time, I realised that I’d totally underestimated just how much humans loved to argue.

I watched it all from a comfortable position in No.10 and came to the conclusion that us cats definitely had politics right.

We don’t have referendums.

If we want something, we sit on it until somebody gives it to us.

It’s a far more efficient and effective way of doing things.

There were campaigns, heated debates, television appearances, explosive newspaper headlines, and eventually millions of self‑appointed experts shouting at each other about something six months earlier they knew jack shit about (and quite frankly, still didn’t).

There were statistics flying around everywhere.

One politician announced a figure and another immediately appeared on TV explaining why that figure was completely wrong. Then somebody else appeared to explain why the second person was wrong about the first person being wrong.

There were loud arguments about immigration, trade, sovereignty, borders, fiscal economics, jurisdiction, regulations, the NHS and practically every other topic the ordinary person — well, except Nigel, of course — had a remote handle on any of it.

And the humans, bless them, they’ll come after me for saying that; call it demeaning or derogatory to question their understanding or intelligence.

So, let’s be clear: Leave or Remain — nobody understood a fucking thing.

And if they did, we wouldn’t still be wading through this mountain of shit ten years later with Brexit still not completely “resolved.”

And if you thought things couldn’t turn into any bigger of a shit-show — Boris was now firmly smack bang in the middle of everything.

I’d known Boris for years — the calamitous former Mayor of London with stupid mop-head hair and an uncanny knack of appearing everywhere even without being invited.

Somehow he was now a “serious” political figure. I use the word serious with a huge pinch of salt, because I’ve still not got a clue what the hell the British public saw in the bumbling buffoon.

But Boris had joined the Leave campaign — and that suddenly gave it a very different dynamic.

He was instantly recognisable, entertaining (apparently), unpredictably theatrical and, crucially, for reasons which still baffle my brain, people paid attention whenever he opened his mouth.

Meanwhile, Dave was the face of the Remain campaign.

So there was — Dave on one side, Boris on the other, Nigel lurking somewhere nearby with a pint, and the rest of the political establishment doing their best to assure the country they knew precisely what was going on.

I’m convinced not a single one did.

Then along came the bus. Humans seem to love putting enormous political messages on buses — I’ve no idea why, but they do.

Leave put the infamous £350 million a week and NHS claim on its bus, and the argument over that figure went on to become as famous as the whole campaign itself.

This was no longer just a simple disagreement.

The humans were absolutely furious.

The country was divided almost straight down the middle, 50/50, into two distinct camps — and they were both utterly convinced that the other side was either dangerously stupid, recklessly dishonest, or…. both.

Then, something happened that changed the atmosphere entirely — Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered while carrying out her constituency duties.

Whatever people thought about the EU, whichever side they were on, a completely innocent woman was killed doing the job that she had been elected to do.

There was nothing funny about that. It was appalling — disgraceful.

And for a short period, the shouting stopped — and people remembered that there were actual human beings involved in all of this.

Then the campaign restarted — and eventually there was nothing left to do but to vote.

I remember the day clearly because the atmosphere at No.10 was very different.

There was a real nervousness around the place. People were watching the polls, making predictions and all the while pretending not to be concerned.

But the reality was — they were all shitting themselves.

I wasn’t bothered in the slightest.

I’m a cat, and…. I don’t even get to vote — which is an absolute farce really, but we’ll leave that for another day. I’ve had enough of this bullshit now and just want to finish and take a nap.

So…. I spent the evening doing the same thing that I always do.

Eat. Sleep. And watch humans make themselves ill over something else they had voluntarily brought on.

Then the results started coming in. At first, there was still a belief that Remain would win. But as the night wore on, the picture began to change — and eventually, it became obvious.

Leave was winning — and there was no hiding from it.

The final result was:

51.9% — Leave

48.1% — Remain.

Britain had voted to leave the EU.

I looked at Dave. Then I looked at the television. And then I looked back at Dave.

Other than the background news of the television everyone else was in complete shock and in total silence.

Not because of the result — because that’s democracy, but in all of the five years I’d known Dave this was the only time I genuinely felt sorry for him…. he was white as a ghost and for once… totally speechless.

The country had voted Leave.

By keeping his promise and doing the right thing Dave had ended his own premiership. Having vehemently campaigned for remain, he was left with no other choice but to resign.

And I was left with a horrible feeling that this wasn’t going to end quickly…. and as it turned out, I was absolutely spot on.

But every cloud, with Dave leaving No.10… that meant George was also out of No.11… and that meant…

… goodbye fucking Freya.