PART TWO of my twitter book. For PART ONE see the link.

A few days after the dinner, President Xi tapped on my door. He wanted to know whether I would be interested in attending a meeting of the party’s central committee that afternoon. I answered enthusiastically .. https://twitter.com/CliveWismayer/status/1246520125148270595

.. & Xi said they would send a car. ‘Oh,’ he said ‘as your Mandarin seems good enough, Xing will not accompany you. A car will be sent for you. Be ready at 2’.

At the appointed time, the car arrived & took me out of the compound for the first time in months. I took in ..

.. the quiet streets on the short journey to party HQ. I was ushered into the committee room where 30 or so party functionaries waited. They were not readily distinguishable. All were male, of a similar age & wore dark suits. After the ritual of greetings & pleasantries I was ..

.. seated on a chair surrounded on three sides by the functionaries, all facing me. It felt like the trial in Wuhan, especially when the lights were dimmed & a spotlight fell on me. Odd, I thought.

‘Tell us about the British class system’ said a voice.

[TBC]

April turned into May, to June & then July. The eerie quietness of the British spring slowly yielded to a busier summer as the peak of the virus seemed to pass. The prime minister’s coach & four turned off Whitehall through the gates & into Downing St. A postilion alighted, ..

.. opened the carriage door & unfolded the steps. Sir Jacob in his frock coat stepped down and, without acknowledging the press swarming behind the gates, entered no. 10. Unceremoniously, he summoned his PPS to the cabinet room.

‘Rupert’
‘Yes, prime minister?’

..

Rees Mogg flinched.
‘Excuse me, yes First Lord?’
‘Thank you. What’s this I hear about the pork bellies.’
‘Ah, yes’ said Sir Rupert Pinkerton-Smallwinkle ‘well it’s the regulations, you see.’
‘What regulations?’
‘The European Union (harmonisation & alignment) Regulations ..

.. 2020’
‘And they say what?’
‘We cannot import American pork bellies without prior authorisation from the Commission’
‘Nonsense’ said Rees-Mogg. ‘The regulations say no such thing.’
‘Sir, the French say they do & the law officers agree’.
‘The damned French again! Schedule ..

.. another conference for tomorrow at 8 a.m. sharp with the Foreign & Colonial secretary & the First Lord of the Admiralty’.
Sir Rupert sighed wearily. Yet another war conference.
‘Meanwhile’ Rees-Mogg continued ‘I am making an order in council now repealing those ..

.. perfidious regulations en bloc! We will sign the pork bellies order tomorrow!’
‘But Prime .. First Lord, that will create many difficulties. If I may summarise ..’
‘Not now Sir Rupert. There is a tide in the affairs of men and all that.’

Perkins, who had been quietly ..

.. taking notes throughout put up a hand. ‘Excuse me’ he quavered ‘my ink well has run dry. I need to pop out & get some more ink. I am most terribly sorry.’
Rees-Mogg airily waived him away & Perkins left, tip toed down the corridor & lifted the receiver from the hall ..

.. telephone. A few minutes later, somewhere in the bowels of the offices of The Financial Conduct Authority an alert sounded on a desktop. It had detected a significant uptick in purchases of American pork belly futures ...

[TBC]

Rees-Mogg ascended the stairs at no. 10 at the end of a long day. He passed on the way portraits of his illustrious predecessors: Gladstone, Disraeli, Pitt the Elder (unknown to him, this was how his immediate entourage referred to him behind his back), Roseberry ...

.. He reflected on his achievements of the last 3 months. A deeply insecure man of limited imagination & no originality, he had always yearned for an imagined past of imperial greatness & now, as prime minister, he was not going to waste the chance to recreate it. ..

.. The empire was probably at its zenith at the end of the 19th century &, confusing correlation with causation, Rees-Mogg took measures to make England great once more.

He had all computers & similar gadgets removed from no. 10. Only antiquated, two-piece telephones ..

.. were allowed. Long distance communication could be conducted by telegraph (so he thought, but his staff simply contrived to construct a fictitious world around him while carrying on normally beyond his notice). Fountain pen & ink replaced printer & keyboard. He would ..

.. only read copperplate manuscript documents. He annotated them in red ink which only he could use, usually correcting the grammar & punctuation according to his own rules.

He had drastically cut the cabinet to 19th century proportions, to the chagrin of the third-rate ..

.. whose only prospect of escape from the dreary back benches was thereby quashed.

His domestic policy was simple in concept if not in execution. He planned to dismantle the state almost entirely. There would remain the three armed services, the Bank of England, Treasury, ..

.. Foreign & Colonial office & the Home Office. Anything else would have to justify itself.

Foreign policy was also simple - recreation of the empire. He planned to do this by persuasion if possible. He was convinced he could explain to the commonwealth countries, ..

.. dependencies & overseas territories that there best interests were to be governed from London. Opposition was to be expected, especially from France & the Americans. The French had already started causing trouble - hence tomorrow’s conference.

He longed for the weekend ..

.. & his weekly sojourn in Somerset, especially the drive down.

BEIJING, April

‘The elite class consists of the monarchy & its adherents - the aristocracy, powerless but still clinging on. One must add to this class an entire stratum of fawning, grovelling flunkies ..

.. & parasites. It is a brainless class of particularly thick people who have not faced any real challenge for several hundred years, unless you count climbing on a horse & charging at the French or Russians.’

Thus I began my analysis of the British class system.

[TBC]

‘Beneath this class’ I continued, ‘are the billionaires & giant corporates that own & control everything, including the state.’

At this point, one of the committee members interrupted ‘Why does this class not destroy the aristocratic class?’

‘Because they aspire to ..

.. join it & because the monarchy & its parasites present no threat, having been progressively neutered over time.’ I went on: ‘Then there is the upper middle or managerial class. The senior professionals, leading City figures, politicians & so forth. The dominate ..

.. government, media (especially state media), the judiciary, banks & business.‘

I rounded off my answer with a look at the mostly conservative lower middle & working classes, the wealth creators upon whose backs everything is built. And with that I returned to the ..

.. compound, enjoying the great privilege of riding with President Xi. ‘You know’ said Xi ‘you see things as we see them. We may have need of more than your antibodies.’

[TBC]

London, July

At 8.00 a.m. Rees-Mogg’s war cabinet assembled in the war room beneath no. 10 as ordered the day before. Lord Jellicoe of Jutland, First Lord of the Admiralty, & Sir Gavin Williamson, Foreign & Colonial secretary, plus relevant officials.

Williamson ..

.. had been promoted after being the only candidate for the post who showed genuine belief in the feasibility of Rees-Mogg’s project of restoring the empire. Upon taking up his office he had already written to the heads of various commonwealth governments informing them ..

.. peremptorily of the suspension of their sovereign powers, ordering them to govern provisionally until the King Emperor Andrew (who had succeeded after all his predecessors in the royal line were wiped out by the virus) chose to make clear his further wishes.

These ..

.. communications were received with raised eyebrows in Delhi, Canberra, Nairobi etc. & urgent diplomatic missions were despatched from their embassies seeking clarification & voicing strongly-worded protests. However, the various governments, having the virus to contend with, ..

.. had assigned little significance to something they regarded as a British aberration which would be clarified in talks.

Jellicoe’s was an even stranger appointment, being based purely on the fact he had inherited his great grandfather’s title. He has never been in the navy ..

.. nor put to sea & knew nothing whatever of naval warfare. Rees-Mogg, however, believed so strongly in the hereditary principle that he considered Jellicoe best suited of all the available candidates. To his credit, Jellicoe had since taken office done his best to ..

.. plug the yawning gap in his knowledge so as not to be entirely useless.

‘Right’ said Rees-Mogg, standing over a huge map of France ‘you have all read the briefing. The French are acting up again, trying to disrupt our vital Atlantic trade. They must be taught a lesson. ..

.. and this time I mean to use force. Williamson?’

‘I recommend a nuclear strike, sir. I have already told them to shut up & go away so they can’t say they have not been duly warned. We send out the entire Trident fleet & take out Paris, Lyons & Marseilles to begin with & ..

.. then invite them for talks.’

Jellicoe was aghast. ‘You do realise France also has a nuclear arsenal & would be bound to use it in retaliation? Millions would die & our largest cities would be destroyed.’

Williamson, taken aback by the depth of Jellicoe’s insight, replied ..

.. ‘Oh yes. That’s actually quite a good point. Perhaps we should reconsider.’

Rees-Mogg’s attention meanwhile was focused on Cherbourg. He pointed a bony finger at the map, tapped it 2 or 3 times & said ‘blockade’.

[TBC]

Rees-Mogg explained his idea. As a warning only, the French port would be subjected to naval blockade, reminding the French in a proportionate manner who ruled the waves. Jellicoe interjected ‘but sir, all our ships are scattered across the globe as part of the gunboat ..

.. diplomacy policy you adopted in order to chivvy the commonwealth countries back into the empire.’

‘All?’ replied Rees-Mogg.
‘Yes’ said Jellicoe. ‘We even have King Emperor Andrew due to dock in Delhi on the royal RORO ferry.’
Williamson chimed in - ‘We still have ..

.. something up our sleeve. Just leave this to me.’
‘Alright’ said Rees-Mogg ‘but we say nothing to the French until the blockade is in place.’ Jellicoe kept his reservations to himself.

After some days went by without hearing anything from the French, Rees-Mogg started to ..

.. become anxious. What WERE they up to? They must have noticed the stranglehold by now. Why had they not asked for talks? Against his inclinations, Rees-Mogg put a call through to the Elysee & after a short delay President Macron came on the line.

‘Bonjour Jacob!’ he said ..

.. warmly. ‘How nice to hear from you. What do you wish to speak about?’
Rees-Mogg, who disliked being mocked, replied ‘you know perfectly well, Emanuel’.
‘I assure you I do not!’
‘Cherbourg’ said Rees-Mogg
‘What about it?’
‘We have shut it down.’
The president was nonplussed ..

.. ‘Nobody has told me. I had better look into it. Can I call you back?’
‘Yes, you do that’ answered Rees-Mogg.
‘May I ask - why, assuming it to be the case, you have taken this drastic action?’
‘You know perfectly well’ sniffed Rees-Mogg ‘but since you insist upon ..

.. being obtuse, it’s those pork bellies.’
‘Aah’, said Macron. ‘I thought we were due to discuss those at the next summit.’
‘Quite, but meanwhile you have chosen to disrupt an important trade link of ours’.
‘But the regulations - ‘ began Macron, before hearing the line go ..

.. dead.
‘Hervé’ he said. ‘Get me the Cherbourg harbour master on the phone, would you?’ The secretary did as asked & a rather surprised & intimidated Hercule Dubois soon found himself addressing his president. ‘Dubois, is it?’ ‘Yes, Monsieur le President’.

‘Tell me, ..

.. would you, is there anything I should know about the port?’
‘No sir’.
‘Nothing at all?’
‘No sir, nothing. Except ..’
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s a little odd but while ships have been coming & going normally we have noticed splotches of white paint on the arrivals.’
‘White paint?’ ..

.. ‘Yes sir. It washes off & causes no harm so we have attached no importance to it.’
Macron thanked Dubois & called Rees-Mogg to tell him what his enquiries had uncovered. Rees-Mogg’s head sunk into his hand. He thanked the president & sent for Williamson.

‘Williamson’ he ..

.. said ‘tell me about the craft we have been employing in the Cherbourg blockade.’
‘Two naval cutters, sir. Fine, sea keeping vessels we have kept up our sleeve!’
‘And their armament?’
‘Paint ball guns, sir’.
‘Paint ball guns.’
‘Yes, First Lord’.
‘You have been firing ..

.. paintballs at blockade runners expecting them to stop.’
‘Not just that. We also hail them & issue orders. So far the blighters have chosen to run the gauntlet but our presence will soon take effect, I am sure of it. They are mostly ferries leaving from Portsmouth ..

.. as a matter of fact.’
‘Thank you Williamson. End the blockade now, would you? There’s a good chap. And say nothing of it to anyone.’
Williamson, somewhat mystified, scuttled off merrily enough. Rees-Mogg sank into an armchair & covered his face. It was weekend & time ..

.. for his weekly jaunt down to Somerset, thank goodness. He didn’t think he could take much more of the frustration.

Perkins, who had been taking notes, used the opportunity to head for the hall telephone. Perhaps shorting the pound in anticipation of Anglo-French ..

.. hostilities had not been one of his better tips. He might have some explaining to do.

Thus began & ended our first war against the old enemy for above 200 years. And the French had not even noticed.

[TBC]

Part Three begins here:

https://twitter.com/clivewismayer/status/1269376925769883648?s=21 https://twitter.com/CliveWismayer/status/1269376925769883648