Defection Special

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1/10 Had a plan last year that I’d join Reform UK as a mole – as a woke leftie spy, if you will. I thought that once I was in, I could stealthily convert members from a far-right worldview to a more progressive, compassionate one, maybe even normalise tofu. I’d convert one or two a week, over a round of golf, or a succulent roast duck.

I’d read up on fox hunting, how to ride a horse. I’d slim down so I could fit in the jodhpurs. I’d even learned what jodhpurs were, and how to spell ‘jodhpurs.’

2/10 Started well. Uncle Dave showed me how easy it was to stand as a Reform candidate, having already wrecked his own district council. Stumped up cash for my membership, Post Office fees to convert it from roubles, mates had a whip round, got me the rest.

Met the Treasurer (said his name was Jackie) at my first Branch meeting at the Gusset and Warlock in Kirkby. Jackie said he was angry and furious at everything. Immigration, the woke, getting mocked from age of 6 for having a girl’s name.

3/10 I tried to deflect but Jackie was having none of it. Said he’d been bullied for his name at school and one time someone had hit him really hard on the buttocks with some sopping wet trunks when they’d been out swimming. Said it might have been his geography teacher, who voted Labour, and this had been pivotal for Jackie, an awakening.

I placated Jackie with some beef and onion crisps and a nice game of darts. He asked if I had my own jodhpurs, and if I hated foxes. I was in!

4/10 Next thing I know I’m at a hunt in Grove and Rufford and a protestor’s pouring custard down Jackie’s undercrackers. It’s all I can do to keep in character, but Jackie’s guard is down and here’s my chance.

‘Mate,’ I say. ‘Your a bubbling, boiling, cauldron of hate.’

I know it’s ‘you’re’ and not ‘your’ of course, but I’m inside Reform now and I can’t blow my cover, even if it means deliberately misspelling a joke Jackie will never see written down, not least because I’m doubtful he can read.

5/10 ‘Where does it end, Jackie?’ I ask him.

‘Wouldn’t there be such exquisite, beautiful relief in rooting your core values around compassion for your fellow human being, no matter who they are, where they’ve come from, how they’ve got here, instead of demonising desperate people in boats? Should your ire and fury not be directed at the rich instead?’

Jackie looks at me, transfixed. Then, suddenly he whispers: ‘DEAR GOD, YOU’RE A MOLE. I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME. HELP ME WITH THIS CUSTARD.’

6/10 It takes a while, and it’s messy, but somehow we get Jackie into fresh jodhpurs. He takes me to a nearby hostelry. The public bar at the Noggin and Twang is heaving, so we move to the snug for more privacy. I grab a cider. Jackie’s horse has a Babycham.

‘I’m not Reform,’ says Jackie. ‘I work for Ed Davey. Lib Dem deep ops. Similar brief to you.’

This could be a double bluff so I flannel him, even though the flannel’s covered in custard.

‘You need to stop with the custard jokes,’ says Jackie.

7/10 ‘Look, Si. I know you’re a spy deployed to Reform to bring about left-wing conversions, but at the hunt you went straight in with an appeal to raw human compassion. Rookie mistake. I had to get you out of there before you moved onto logic and reason, and backing facts up with data that can be verified.’

‘So … you think killing foxes is wrong, Jackie?’ I ask, testing him.

‘It’s monstrous and cruel,’ he says. ‘But you can’t tell them I think that. Promise me.’

‘Pinkie swear, dude,’ I say.

8/10 ‘You can’t wreck the plan,’ says Jackie. ‘We’re so close. Conversions at parish level? District? Even county? Futile. We need to go bigger.’

The horse wanders over for some fruit machine money. I give him a couple of quid, sugar lumps and some spare baccy. Jackie continues.

‘Reform Parliamentary Party. That’s the Death Star. I’m Andor. You’re the bloke who writes the manifesto but gets killed midway through season one. Relax. All this is a metaphor.’

I thank him for this, at once relieved.

9/10 ‘But the Reform Death Star? It has a serious structural weakness. We can exploit it. We can completely destroy it. Because we have … an X Wing. Not an actual X Wing. That’s also a metaphor.’

‘Is that the time, Jackie?’ I enquire, utterly fed up writing this thread now, to be fair.

‘We needed a progressive. A figure so woke, so literati, so radical left scum, that straight away on entering the Death Star it would start to implode, fragment. Our cloaking device worked. He’s there now.’

10/10 I stare at Jackie, dumbfounded at the plan’s simple cunning.

The cloaking device WAS the virulent hatred. The painting over of the children’s murals. He’d been a leftie plant all along. He’d helped take down the Tory Party with his pretend hate, offensive to so many decent people, and now to reveal his true Marxist colours on joining Nigel’s grifters. Genius!

‘YOU SEE?’ asks Jackie, at point of climax.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around as Robert Jenrick takes off his horse costume.

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1/10 Had a plan that I’d check in with Jackie, my handler at Lib Dem deep ops. He’d gone dark since Jenrick’s defection to Reform UK.

‘NEW MEETING PLACE,’ Jackie texts. ‘SEE YOU AT THE NIPPLE AND HINGES.’

It’s a rank old boozer in Romford. Jackie’s in the snug.

‘Andrew Rosindell!’ he says. ‘Thought the next defection would be Cthulhu, or Mothra the sentient larva.’

‘They’re Tory MPs?’

‘May as well be. Think Mothra’s an alias for Mark Francois, though the ‘sentient’ bit makes me doubt myself.’

2/10 Eric the landlord comes over with a roll of old carpet.

‘It’s not a body in there, Jackie,’ he wheezes.

Eric stares me in the face with his one good eye, other eye staring at the ceiling. He must have had hair once, teeth, clothes. He’s like Golem on smack.

He hands me what’s hidden in the carpet.

‘We need you deep cover,’ says Jackie. ‘If it’s too tight, strip down. Eric’s got baby oil.’

Ten minutes later, I emerge from the gents in my all-over prosthetic rubber Mark Francois bodysuit.

3/10 ‘They could be twins,’ grins Eric.

‘No. Si’s much taller than Penfold,’ says Jackie. ‘Suit’s too stretched. You got one of these in Desmond Swayne?’

‘I’ll have a look on Temu,’ mutters Eric. ‘Let’s get him out of this. Use that baby oil, did you?’

‘I didn’t, Eric, no.’

‘Then brace yourself, son,’ he says.

Rubber suit smashes through the window at 80mph, takes out a bloke on a moped, sends a Shih Tzu flying into some Jehovah’s Witnesses by the Netto.

‘SHIT! NOT AGAIN!’ screams Eric. ‘RUN!’

4/10 ‘WE’RE BUSTED! MOVE!’ yells Jackie.

We follow him out the back door, pile into his ’75 Vauxhall Viva, pedal to the metal. Two hours later, we’re back at the Noggin and Twang.

‘Jenrick country,’ sniffs Eric, suspiciously. ‘This a Reform boozer?’

‘It is, Eric,’ says Jackie. ‘Farridge drinks here, so does the Krugermeister, Tricky Dicky when he’s not in Dubai. And the function room’s booked out tonight for the Tom Skinner Rumba Club. We need to blend in. Both of you, put on these jodhpurs.’

5/10 In jodhpurs, Eric looks like Golem on smack wearing jodhpurs. Jackie’s worried that Eric might blow our cover, so he sends him out to keep watch by the Vauxhall Viva.

I find us a table. Jackie comes over with two Babychams and a bag of scratchings.

‘With Bobby J gone to Reform,’ whispers Jackie, ‘we needed a Tory MP mole. That was Plan A. Kidnapped Francois so you could take his place but forgot he was short and the rubber suit wouldn’t fit. So here’s Plan B. See that horse by the bar?’

6/10 ‘That’s not a real horse,’ says Jackie.

I remind him it wasn’t a real horse in episode one, just a horse costume that Robert Jenrick was wearing. Jackie tells me it’s someone else in the costume now.

‘Mark Francois?’

‘Nah. He’s tied up at mum’s, sack on his head, feet in a bucket of custard. Also, allergic to horse fur.’

‘IT’S RUMBA TIME!’ bellows Tom Skinner, entering the pub. ‘Micky? Here’s that leotard. Like we practiced, yeah?’

The snug empties as the punters follow Skinner upstairs.

7/10 Jackie whistles for the horse. It whinnies and trots over, munching on sugar lumps and sipping a G&T. Ceiling starts thumping as Skinner kicks off upstairs. Sounds like he’s warming them up with a light salsa.

‘BOSH! BOSH! HAVE IT! HAVE IT! BOSH! BOSH! HAVE IT! HAVE IT!’

It’s all very rhythmic. Bit of ceiling plaster falls into the horse’s G&T, but it remains unphased.

‘Coast is clear,’ says Jackie.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around as Desmond Swayne takes off his horse costume.

8/10 ‘You whinnied! You trotted! Nice!’ says Jackie to Swayne.

‘Stanislavski won’t cut it,’ says Swayne. ‘How do you method act a horse? Hard! Ask Daniel Day-Lewis. Closest he came was a zebra. Had to go Uta Hagen substitution method. No comparable lived experience of being a horse but spent some time as a badger in the 1970s.’

‘Gave yourself away with the G&T,’ I tell him.

‘Did not!’ says Swayne. ‘Horses love the booze. Shergar wasn’t stolen. Ten pints of scrumpy and a kebab, fell in the Thames.’

9/10 Then it hits me. Desmond Swayne was a badger in the 1970s.

‘You’ll be Chief Advisor to Swayne,’ Jackie tells me. ‘Full access to the Commons and inner workings of the Tory Parliamentary Party. You’ll ferret out the Reform defections as they happen. Nige will turn on Jenrick when he goes full Marxist.’

‘I was a ferret in 1961,’ confirms Swayne.

‘So, I’m not Mark Francois / Penfold the mole?’ I ask.

Dangermouse’s sidekick was really a timid hamster and a not a mole, but I’ve parked this issue.

10/10 ‘You’re still a mole, but no latex requirement,’ says Jackie. ‘We’re on for Plan B.’

‘OH! ARE WE?!?’ thunders Swayne, dramatically. ‘DON’T BE SO SURE!’

Rubber stretches and rips as Eric, landlord of the Nipple and Hinges, pulls off his all-over prosthetic Desmond Swayne bodysuit.

‘Might need to sew that,’ puffs Eric. ‘Temu came through. The real Swayne’s tied up in the back of the Viva. Try this on for size, son.’

Jackie winks, hands me the baby oil.

‘Seems we’re on for Plan C,’ he says.

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