Shortly after 4pm, Kim Jong-May stepped out of her bunker to deliver a three-minute victory speech to a few members of the media in a factory in Brentford, west London. Not that it was a victory. Not by the Supreme Leader’s demanding standards.
The annihilation of Ukip had been no more than she expected, but there was still the hint of a pulse in Labour. Winning councils in the Labour heartlands of north-east England along with everywhere else in the country was all well and good, but she wouldn’t sleep easy until all opposition was ground into the dirt.
The Supreme Leader tried to keep the anger out of her voice. The results were definitive proof that the Evil EU Empire was manipulating the British electorate. Not only had it prevented her from winning by an even larger margin thanks to a dirty tricks campaign, it had forced enough people to vote Tory to lure Britain into a false security that The Supreme Leader would get a landslide victory on 8 June. Left to their own devices, the voters might then be tempted to think it was safe to come out and vote for Jeremy Corbyn. She alone had the power to outwit Jerry.
“The results are encouraging,” Kim Jong-May said. “But I am taking nothing for granted.” The local election results were neither here nor there, really. All that mattered was her coronation on 8 June. We must not fall into Jean-Claude Juncker’s trap. If the country relaxed for even a second then Corbyn’s coalition of chaos would take power, all our expats would be left stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk and the EU flag would be flying over No 10.
Now was not the time for triumphalism. The country craved strong and stable leadership and she was the only person strong and stable enough to deliver it. Her sword would not sleep in her hand until she had smitten every Brussels bureaucrat. The general election was too close to call. The whole future of the country was at stake. If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe she was telling the truth. Besides, what kind of Supreme Leader only got a majority of 100?
John McDonnell was much happier. It had been a challenging night, the shadow chancellor admitted, but Labour had responded magnificently by not being totally wiped out. When you thought about it properly, Labour could potentially have lost every single seat in the country. So to have retained control of councils such as Cardiff, that they had only held for several decades, was a brilliant achievement. One that could only have been possible under Corbyn’s remarkable leadership.
McDonnell also spoke of plots. There had been a widespread conspiracy by the mainstream media to accurately report that most voters thought Corbyn was a bit of a liability. So for Corbyn to have only lost hundreds of council seats was a total triumph. Once the Labour leader had had a chance to get his message across personally – all visitors to the allotment welcome – he would march to glory in June. People were just going to love the real Jeremy once they really got to know him.
As the news for Labour got progressively worse as the day went on, with the Tories even making massive gains in the Labour heartlands of the north-east, Stephen Kinnock dared to suggest the results were disastrous. Diane Abbott was appalled by this. Like McDonnell, she could hardly have imagined the day going any better.
“So how many seats have you lost so far?” asked an ITV reporter.
Abbott thought about getting out her calculator, but then decided against it. This was a sum that even she could deal with. “About 50,” she announced, confidently.
“Erm ... You’ve actually already lost over 125,” the reporter pointed out.
“Oh,” said Diane, not quite sure what the problem with that was. “When I last looked we had lost about 100.” 50, 100, whatever ... They were basically much the same number. They both had noughts in them, after all.
On her way out of the ITV studio, Abbott received a text. Corbyn had gone missing in inaction and every other senior Labour MP had retired to a darkened room with a large scotch. Would she mind going on to the BBC as well? Abbott was only too thrilled. There was nothing she liked more than being given another chance to make an idiot of herself in public. “It’s not a matter of leadership,” she told the Daily Politics. “Everyone I have spoken to thinks Jeremy is marvellous.” There again, she had only talked to his close relatives.
