For a long while it looked as though it wasn’t just the NHS that had had its operating systems hacked. Even on one of his livelier days, the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, gives the impression of a sub-optimal, secondhand android, but for his performance on the Andrew Marr Show he was reduced to a state of near-catatonia.
Marr began by challenging Fallon on the Conservative party’s failure to honour its commitments to maintain the size of Britain’s armed services. “The computer says no,” said Mogadon Mike. The fact that he hadn’t managed to meet his recruitment targets and numbers were falling were a sure sign his policy was working. What was happening was a tactical retreat to make the enemy think we didn’t have a big military capability. And once we had lured them into a false sense of security we would conduct a massive recruitment drive and take over the planet.
Not entirely convinced by Mogadon Mike’s cunning plan, Marr moved on to how the Tories were going to fund their promise to increase defence spending by £1bn more than the 2% annual target. “By growing the economy,” said Mogadon Mike, who didn’t appear to have read the government’s own briefing papers that even the most optimistic Brexit forecasts suggest the economy is likely to take a five-year hit.
“There’s a black hole in the defence equipment budget of £7bn,” said Marr. There was also a black hole in the TV studio into which Mogadon Mike’s personality had long since disappeared.
“We’re going to make £7.3bn of efficiency savings by selling off some airfields,” the defence secretary replied defensively. It was like this. Now that we only had about eight serviceable aircraft in the RAF we really didn’t need the luxury of giving each plane two of its own airfields.
So the plan was to flog all the airfields to the Candy brothers so they could build luxury gated communities for Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes in the middle of nowhere. And as for the remaining eight RAF planes, their takeoffs and landings could be neatly scheduled into the runway expansion at Heathrow airport.
Marr then asked about whether Britain’s nuclear subs might be vulnerable to the same cyber threat as the NHS. He might also have wondered if Jeremy Hunt had been recently appointed a submarine commander for all the media time the health secretary has taken up explaining the disaster. Mogadon Mike didn’t want to go into operational details but he could put people’s minds at rest. While the NHS was using Windows XP, the Vanguard subs were still on Windows 95 and so weren’t at risk.
“Is there any wars you haven’t supported?” Marr asked. Mogadon Mike looked puzzled. Why would anyone pass up the opportunity to have a good war? Or a bad one. The intervention in Libya had been absolutely necessary, he insisted, because it was absolutely vital to prevent a humanitarian disaster by creating an even bigger one. The people of Britain couldn’t keep funding the armed services if they never got to see them use their weapons.
Sensing that Mogadon Mike was in clear and present danger of flatlining on the sofa, Marr brought along Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, to apply some defibrillation.
“Can you remember where you were on 27 May 2007?” Emily asked, after Fallon had brought up Jeremy Corbyn’s associations with the IRA.
Mogadon Mike can barely remember what he has done five minutes previously – a bonus for interviews like the one he had just given – but he was sure Emily would enlighten him. She would. He had been at a celebration party in Syria to commiserate with President Assad over only getting 99% of the vote and to wish him all the best with the genocide of his own country.
“I don’t recall this,” Mogadon Mike said angrily, finally showing a flicker of a pulse and choosing to launch a counterstrike. Hadn’t she just just said Corbyn would hand over the Falklands to the Argies?
“That’s bollocks.” Emily replied. Marr tried not to snigger. “I didn’t say that. You can’t make stuff up as you go along.”
Mogadon Mike didn’t see why not, as his malware started spewing out garbled data about Corbyn’s journey. He somehow managed to overlook the supreme leader’s journey, which had been far more arduous than Jeremy’s. From remainer to hard Brexiteer, from no election to election: all within a year.
In the Battle for Britain, this had been Emily’s finest hour.
