Dominions beyond the Cs

With the rent looming, Engels took a position at a call centre conducting polling on behalf of a well-known organisation. The question of the day was whether the prime minister had risen or fallen in public estimation as a result of the Raab affair. Engels was shown to one of a long line of booths and handed a headset and call script.

“The computer will do the calling,” his manager said. “You just follow the script.”

Never his strong suit, but Engels was willing to try. Besides, it was interesting to hear the views of voters. The script (“Would you say that after Mr Raab’s resignation you are more or less likely to vote for a Conservative candidate?”) was mostly given extremely short shrift by the one-in-twenty who actually answered the call, few of whom seemed willing to admit they had ever voted Conservative, and many of whom resorted to well-worn expletives to make their point.

Of course, Engels couldn’t have agreed more.

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said to a Mrs Pickard of Hull in response to a short but instructive volley of C-this and F-that. (After twenty years gutting haddock on the Grimsby dock, Mrs Pickard also wore her expletives well.) “So what do you think? Will the former minister be loyal on the backbenches?”

“He wouldn’t know the meaning of the word,” she replied. “Look at how he behaved over Gibraltar. They’ve been in power too long, that lot. Like rats in a gunny sack, the lot of them. Them and the Tory press. None of them can toe a line anymore because there isn’t one. It’s every rat for themselves. You mark my words, there’ll be another Dom in yon voting scandal soon.”

“That’s a whole ‘nuther story,” Engels replied.