In the early hours of my day in charge of the country, the people of Barnsley will be woken from their flat-capped slumber by a rhythmic and insistent clanking as the machinery of government is levered into place in the middle of my village on the outskirts of The Shining City on the Hill, as we locals call it. The House of Commons, the House of Lords, the departments of state will all straddle the river Dearne rather than the Thames; there’ll be ermine catching in the swirling water, expensive suits dragging in the mud. From today, the south is The Provinces, and Round Here is the Home Counties. The Queen will relocate to Grimethorpe and, guess what: she’ll enjoy it. She’ll love it. She’ll wonder why she ever lived anywhere else.
Now it’s time to legislate, quickly, like all governments try to do, before people work out what I’m doing. Tax will be abolished; well, the word tax will be abolished and replaced by the word joy, because the paying of tax is a joyful thing. As the old saying goes, it’s the price we pay for civilisation.“Paid your joy, yet, George?” “I certainly have, Mavis, and that’s why I feel so joyous this morning.” “And is that why we’ve got a new library on every street corner, George?” “It certainly is, Mavis: I saw the Queen in there yesterday, borrowing Rights of Man!” “Ah, joy!”
HS2 will be scrapped by late morning and replaced by HS4, a superfast monorail connecting Barnsley to Huddersfield. Think of it as Crossrail for the really important places. After all, why shouldn’t the people of Berry Brow and Brockholes be able to get to work very, very quickly in carriages that don’t rattle like bad grammar?
As dinner time looms, I’ll really be getting into my stride. I’ll pass new laws to outlaw discrimination against people because of the way they talk, and indeed there will be positive discrimination, with citizens being rewarded financially for saying “Eyop” rather than “Good morning”. Think of it as a bonus for hardworking linguistic diversity.
Over dinner I’ll disband the Grammar Police, and declare a nationwide apostrophe amnesty, wi’th immediat’e effect. It will warm my prime ministerial heart that people will never be made to feel small and inferior because they put the apostrophe in the “wrong” place. Nobody, and I can say this with absolute certainty, will die as a result of the apostrophe being abolished. Nobod’y.
I’ll raise billions through an “absolutely” levy, claiming a pound every time somebody says the word in answer to a question on TV or radio; I’ll quietly promote Barnsley FC to the Premier League; I’ll make sure that whoever’s head goes on the stamps is decided by a weekly raffle. I’ll make poetry compulsory in parliamentary committee meetings: I campaigned in poetry and I’ll govern in villanelles.
