Anyway, last week I ended up once again hanging out with someone else’s circle of friends. But this time it was the circle of friends that governs the entire country.
This is what I learned: that they serve a seemingly unlimited amount of booze, but not any canapés. And that Rishi Sunak is much, much shorter than I had imagined.
The party was held in the small shady patio out the back of the Spectator’s offices in Westminster, which for one day only had been transformed into a sort of cattle pen for politicians and their handsome political wives. Everyone was crammed in there with the kind of sheer density of people that usually get classed as a war crime. Far away on the other side of the patio, I witnessed the immense form of Andrew Neil looming over the sea of people like a great ruddy-cheeked oil tanker. Elsewhere, Greyson Perry was decked out like a giant frosted cupcake, causing waves of eye-rolls to radiate from him in every direction. I stood for a moment, trying to catch my bearings, at which point a tiny person with a bottle of Pol Roger manifested at my side and offered to refill my still-full glass. This happened roughly every twenty seconds for the rest of the night. The tiny agency workers ducked and weaved through the crowd like a mass of ferrets. None of them spoke English. Nobody looked them in the eye.
Nearby, former Prime Minister Liz Truss was trying to mingle. She would stand nervously on the edge of a little circle, and then when someone said something sort-of funny she would open her mouth wide, as if she were about to swallow a small rodent whole, and enthusiastically emit a breathy prehistoric cackle. At which point the people around her, suddenly aware of her presence, would shuffle imperceptibly to close their ranks and lock Liz out of the circle. It was very strange to see Liz Truss there, acting so much like herself. Everyone’s unkind image of her, conjured out of a few newspaper headlines and YouTube clips, was, it turned out, exactly bang on. Maybe I still believe that famous people should have some mysterious extra aura when you see them in real life. She should have glowed with a residue of power. But she did not. She was the autistic girl who gets invited to the party as a joke.
Nobody wanted to hang out with Liz Truss, but I did. She felt like a kindred spirit, also out of her depth here, also not quite sure who she was supposed to talk to. I wanted to get to know her. I wanted to learn what it was like to be the Mayfly Queen. I never found out. After a few more attempts to make friends, she strode swiftly out of the party and wasn’t seen again for the rest of the night.
So I did some mingling myself. This is how it would go. I would find myself in conversation with a very genial man in a linen suit, who would monologue at me extensively on some subject I’d never once before considered in my life—the different types of tweed and when it’s appropriate to wear them, or the perils and pitfalls of buying a French winery, or how difficult it is these days to find a maker of bespoke fountain pens that hasn’t been poisoned by woke groupthink. Eventually an editor would elbow his way over through the crowd with a smirk. I never thought I’d see the day, he’d say, Sam’s rubbing shoulders with the Tory cabinet. At which point I’d look again at the very genial man in the linen suit. I did recognise him from somewhere, I’d realise; some ministerial scandal, some unflattering papshot in the Guardian. I don’t really follow the news, I’d admit. Eric Gruggins, the editor would say, is the Secretary of State for Torture. Wait, I’d say, torture? The Right Honourable Eric would give a good hearty laugh. Well I don’t torture anyone myself, he’d say. Unless you count civil servants! This would fail to entirely pacify me. It’s about preventing torture, right? I’d say. Eric would smack his lips. With the departmental budgets we’ve got, he’d say, it may as well be! And then he’d discourse in the same jovial tones about how Britain could be Europe’s next big torture hub if only he had the funds, and about the incredible opportunities offered by something he called Torture 2.0. (...)
Eventually one of the think tank guys had a great idea. Would you like to meet Rishi? he said. His name was Adam Quenengo and he ran an outfit called AngliConnex, which was dedicated to the idea that we could save the British economy and also rebuild a strong sense of national belonging by integrating the entire private sector into the Church of England through a new class of ‘business deacons.’ We’d been talking for a few minutes about nothing very much when he’d suddenly looked at me as if for the first time. Wait, he said, you’re Sam Kriss. I admitted that I was, and he made a kind of bowing we-are-not-worthy motion. I love your writing, he said. Didn’t you use to be on the left? I’m still on the left, I said, and he laughed as if I’d said something very funny. I’ve got a great idea, he said, would you like to meet Rishi? To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to meet the Prime Minister. I’d wanted to meet tragic hopeful Liz Truss; I’d wanted to see if there was anything living behind Boris Johnson’s chummy bluster and dull thuggish eyes. But Rishi Sunak was not, as far as I could tell, a particularly interesting person. His favourite novelist is Jilly Cooper. His favourite TV show is Emily in Paris. His plan to save this stagnant island doesn’t even involve any Mongols or business deacons; he seems to think it’ll all sort itself out if we just keep saying the word blockchain. What would we even have to talk about? More bland chitchat, probably; wineries and pens. But I said sure.
Adam beamed. This’ll be hilarious, he said, you know I think the two of you would really get on. You’re both such thinkers. I scanned the sea of well-groomed heads for one that looked suitably Prime Ministerial. Where is he? I said. I don’t think I’ve glimpsed him all night. Ah, said Adam, you won’t have seen him from up there, he’s actually quite short. Which I did know. In the years before Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister I had, like everyone, assumed that he was a fairly tall man, because he had the gangly proportions of a fairly tall man, and maybe also because he was known to be extremely rich. And his press team had done everything possible to maintain the illusion: he gave all his speeches on top of cleverly hidden boxes and always had himself photographed from below, stuff like that, but when you’re running a country the lie can only last so long. Everyone now knows that Rishi Sunak is a kind of homunculus, proportioned exactly like an adult man but disquietingly smaller, like the travel-sized deodorants you buy at airports. But when Adam dragged me to another corner of the garden, I still couldn’t see the Prime Minister anywhere. Here he is, said Adam, and gestured towards a nondescript-looking white guy in a rather heavy-looking suit, who was very clearly not Rishi Sunak. Uh, I said. The white guy didn’t even acknowledge me. He nodded at Adam, reached into his inside jacket pocket, and retrieved a small, expensive-looking red lacquer case embossed with the Royal Arms. It was only slightly larger than a packet of cigarettes. A slight hush fell around us as the case was opened. Inside was Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union; net worth, seven hundred and thirty million pounds. Oh, someone whispered, look, he’s asleep. The handsome political wives all smiled wholesomely to themselves. He was indeed asleep. Rishi Sunak lay curled up in his miniature suit, nestled dreamily in the padding and velvet. His pillow was a single flake of dandruff. His blanket was a postage stamp. Someone had given him a half-thimbleful of Pol Roger, and he was tuckered out for the night. He was dreaming about trade deals. Nuclear submarines skulk the oceans at his command.
