Dear Lynton,
As I said to you before the General Election, if you could fix it for me to be prime minister of the UK, I would make it worth your while. I hope you agree that your knighthood is sufficient reward. I had to come up with some reason for the knighthood so I asked George. We had a bit of a laugh at first but eventually he came up with “political service!” Well, your service to me and the Tory Party was immeasurable so it seems fair enough. Anyway, the other lot have always done it, so they can hardly complain when we look after one of our own!
I knew what you were capable of when Boris was running for the London mayoral job when you successfully persuaded the Greens to move to the left which they promptly did, depriving Ken Livingstone of the extra votes he needed to win. And Michael Howard told me that way back in 2005 your anti-immigration posters played very well with the working classes, many of whom switched to us, although not enough to finally defeat Blair.
I cannot begin to tell you how tiresome it was to repeat your line “long term economic plan” every time any of us were interviewed by the press on anything. I joked with George that it was particularly amusing since George has no plan at all, other than relying on people borrowing, spending and taking out huge loans. He didn’t have a clue how to reduce the deficit and actually doubled the national debt in five years, but you were right: make the other lot look incompetent by blaming them over and over again for the worldwide financial crash and they would never recover.
Banging on about immigration worked too, Lynton (or should that now be Sir Lynton?), even though it went up massively under us. Blaming it all on Europe worked and by so doing we helped bump up the Ukip vote in places where Labour needed to win.
Your Scottish strategy worked a treat too. You knew long before the rest of us that the Scottish vote was very firm and we should emphasise that Miliband would be in hock to Salmond and co. That worked too and well done for persuading Rupert that his newspapers should support the SNP north of the border.
Refusing to take part in the leader debates worked too. I’m not too good in that environment and could easily have been tripped up on detail, never my strong point! Your point was that accusations of weakness and cowardice would soon be forgotten.
Nick will never forgive me for going after Lib Dem MPs in the campaign.He really thought we would look after him after five years of him loyally propping us up and doing everything we told him to do. Vince and Danny weren’t too pleased either, but those knighthoods for “political service” (where I have I heard that one before?) have more than made up for it.
You were right about Miliband, though. No one really knew what he stood for and the voters decided to stick with the devil they knew. But Ed, bless him, left us the golden legacy of setting up a new system for electing a Labour leader and gave us Jeremy Corbyn. I know you have told us not too gloat too much, or to look unbearably smug, but that is mine and George’s default position.
Once I’ve got the referendum out of the way, I’m going to start to wind down. I don’t need the hassle of being blamed for all these bloody floods, or boring meetings with people in places I have never heard of. I can leave that to George to take care of.
Once again, thanks for everything. Because of you, we got away with it and even got a majority that you predicted months ahead. You were worth every penny my hedge fund pals paid to employ you and now we can keep the lower orders where they belong for at least the next five years, probably even 10.
I might come back to you again later when we have to do some more “unpopular” things like flog off the NHS to our pals in the city, but that will have to wait until we’ve won in 2020. Get the “difficult” decisions out of the way early in the parliament, eh?
Once again, thanks for everything. You have done me a great service in putting me back in number ten. Giving you a knighthood was the least I could do!
Yours,
Dave
