2017 – Another Tumultuous Political Year

January

·         Donald Trump is inaugurated as President of the USA. In his inauguration speech he announces the end of White House press briefings. In future all new policies will be revealed on Twitter.

·         The British Supreme Court rules that Parliament must be consulted before Article 50 is triggered.

·         Paul Nuttall steps down as leader of UKIP “for personal and professional reasons”. Nigel Farage becomes interim leader again, so he is now leading UKIP for the fifth time.

·         Len McCluskey, the General Secretary of the Unite trade union, introduces a new union rule whereby anyone in the world can register online for free to become an official supporter of Unite with entitlement to vote in union elections. For unexplained reasons, this news attracts enormous interest in China.

February

·         Both houses of Parliament vote in favour of triggering Article 50. The only MPs to vote against are the SNP’s bloc of 54 plus two independent ex-SNP members, and bizarrely Douglas Carswell, UKIP’s sole MP, who explained that his conscience led him to vote against the motion when Nigel Farage instructed him to vote in favour.

·         850 million dollars is to be spent on a “makeover” of The White House to make it suitable for the new president. It will be painted gold and renamed The Golden Palace.

·         Labour fails to defend Copeland at the by-election brought about by Jamie Reed’s resignation, coming third behind the victorious Conservatives and second placed UKIP. Rejecting calls for his resignation, Jeremy Corbyn explains that he has a popular mandate and outlines his ambition to outlast that “huge figure in our lives” Fidel Castro, who ruled Cuba for 49 years.

March

·         Donald Trump announces on Twitter that the 22^nd Amendment to the US Constitution, which restricts Presidents to two 4-year terms, will be repealed, and that he intends to continue as President “for many years”.

·         On 8 March, Philip Hammond introduces “the last ever” spring budget, proposing large tax reductions “to stimulate the economy”.

·         On 31 March, Article 50 is triggered. Theresa May says “Brexit means Brexit” and promises to outline her negotiation strategy in April.

·         A new leader of UKIP is elected, but he immediately announces that he never intended to stand and it was all a big mistake, so Nigel Farage becomes leader for the sixth time.

 April

·         Jeremy Corbyn yields to mounting pressure in the Labour party and calls a leadership election in which he will seek a “fresh mandate”. Not a single Labour MP comes forward to challenge him.

·         As expected, Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen are the leading two candidates in the first round of the French presidential election. Both ask Nigel Farage to lend his support to their opponent.

·         Theresa May is interviewed by Jeremy Paxman and says 131 times that her negotiation strategy is “negotiation means negotiation”. However, her popularity rating remains at a record high.

·         Len McCluskey is re-elected as General Secretary of Unite, polling just over 500 million votes against Gerard Coyne’s 57,000. His victory speech is in a form of Mandarin, although it is unintelligible even to his Chinese listeners.

·         Donald Trump, celebrating his first 100 days as President, tweets a picture of part of the new wall he claims to have built on the Mexican border. Close examination shows that the picture is in fact of part of the Berlin Wall.

May

·         Opinion polls predict a comfortable win for Francois Fillon in the second round of voting for the French presidency. When the results are announced, Marine Le Pen has won by the astonishing margin of 99.9% to 0.1%. Vladimir Putin denies that Russia has interfered in any way. Donald Trump tweets that it is absurd to suggest that “our good friends” the Russians have hacked the French election. Nigel Farage claims the credit for Marine Le Pen’s victory and offers to become the French ambassador in London. His offer is immediately declined. Marine Le Pen triumphantly announces that a Frexit referendum will be conducted in October.

·         After a catastrophic showing in local elections across Britain, Jeremy Corbyn resigns as Labour leader, leaves the House of Commons and retires to Cuba.

June

·         On 1 June, Sir Alan Duncan, junior minister in the Foreign Office, is on a flight to Brazil which is diverted by bad weather to land at the new airport in St Helena. Locals said that it was the only wind-free day on the island that had occurred in living memory. Unfortunately, the wind becomes too strong for him to be able to take off again. While in his previous job at the Department for International Development, Sir Alan said that the £300m project to build the airport on St Helena had “gone brilliantly”.

·         In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has not been seen in public for three months and it is rumoured that he has died. To counter the rumours, a 30-minute film of him is shown on Zimbabwe TV, but he remains motionless throughout with his eyes closed. Nigel Farage flies to Harare, offering his services as interim leader of ZANU PF.

·         For the first time in 2017, a train from Brighton arrives on time at Victoria Station.

·         The next Labour leader will be either John McDonnell or Chuka Umunna. At a hastily convened and poorly attended 3 a.m. meeting of Labour’s NEC, Momentum gets the election rules changed to permit anyone to vote who has voting rights in a British trade union.

 July

·         Zimbabwe deports Nigel Farage after keeping him under house arrest for a week during which three of his guards shoot themselves in the foot in order to get themselves transferred to a hospital.

·         No Southern Rail trains run at all in July after ASLEF declare that it is unsafe for their drivers to actually drive trains.

·         Nicola Sturgeon announces that a second once-in-a-lifetime referendum will be held on Scottish independence “during our lifetimes”.

·         Boris Johnson has good news for Sir Alan Duncan, who will be evacuated from St Helena “just as soon as it is safe for a plane to land at the new airport”.

·         Theresa May is finally invited to Washington, but she is disappointed to find herself in the Oval Office talking to a “Domestic Sanitary Operative” instead of Donald Trump. They issue a joint communiqué, agreeing that vacuum cleaning means vacuum cleaning.

August

·         Nothing ever happens in August. This also applies to the Brexit negotiations with the EU. The British negotiators repeatedly turn up for meetings in August, only to find that their EU counterparts are all on holiday.

·         However, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is unaware of the unwritten rule about uneventful Augusts and launches a nuclear missile at a remote part of Alaska. Fortunately the nuclear warhead fails to detonate. Donald Trump is initially unaware that Alaska is part of the USA, but he then uses Twitter to order a nuclear strike on Pyongyang. His failure to master the relevant nuclear codes on this occasion prevents the order from being carried out.

·         Nigel Farage is on holiday. So is Sir Alan Duncan – on St Helena.

September

·         Surprisingly, Chuka Umunna is elected as the new leader of the Labour Party by a majority of 490 million. There is speculation that a Chinese linguistic confusion, involving the word “Momentum” and a long period of misfortune, may have been a factor.  However, Chuka Umunna stands aside “for family reasons” after a menacing Momentum-inspired campaign on social media, and John McDonnell becomes leader anyway.

·         Labour holds Islington North, the seat vacated by the now invisible Jeremy Corbyn, with a majority reduced from 21,000 to 47. John McDonnell claims this victory is a “resounding confirmation” of his overwhelming mandate to lead the Labour Party to victory “whenever the Prime Minister musters the courage to go to the country”.

·         Angela Merkel is narrowly returned as Chancellor of Germany. The Kremlin immediately conducts a ruthless purge of the Information Technology department of the state security bureau, the FSB, widely seen as a sign that Russian attempts to hack the German election had been thwarted by efficient German countermeasures.

·         Nigel Farage offers his services as a referendum-winning consultant to the SNP during a joint BBC Scotland interview with Nicola Sturgeon. He is now recovering from her reaction in an Edinburgh hospital, where his condition is described as “regrettably not life-threatening”.

October

·         At the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Theresa May describes Brexit negotiations as “purposeful, meaningful and on schedule”. She repeats her oft-used line that “Brexit means Brexit”. Iain Duncan-Smith reminds her that the British people had voted overwhelmingly for no access to the single market, no speaking of European languages, no garlic, no salami and no foreigners at all to be allowed in the country. Michael Gove disagrees, saying that they had actually voted for British control over British laws. Boris Johnson reveals that he had voted Remain by mistake, or was it Leave? And was it a mistake anyway? Theresa May says that in fact the British people had simply voted Leave, and it is up to her alone to decide what that meant. The media clamour for more transparency around the Brexit negotiations begins to erode confidence in her government.

·         Meanwhile in France, the Frexit campaign seems assured of victory until Nigel Farage arrives in support of Marine Le Pen. His intervention is thought to be the main reason for a late change of mind by the French electorate resulting in a narrow vote in favour of staying in the EU.

·         Sir Alan Duncan, still marooned on St Helena, is instructed by the Prime Minister to resign his seat of Rutland and Melton in order to help preserve the Government’s small majority.

November

·         Lisa Simpson is elected Governor of New Jersey, which some observers see as her first move in a presidential bid in 2020. So there is now the possibility of The Simpsons predicting the identities of two consecutive American presidents in a single episode shown in 2000. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-m_WxGPpOU. Her first step as Governor is to instruct New Jersey law enforcement agencies to expel from the state anyone called either Nigel or Farage.

·         With no UKIP candidate being selected before the close of nominations in Rutland and Melton and with the Liberal Democrats standing aside in their favour, the Green Party candidate unexpectedly wins the by-election on a massive swing from the Conservatives. Labour unsuccessfully challenges the Monster Raving Loony candidate for third place.

·         Philip Hammond’s autumn budget reverses all the measures introduced in his spring budget “owing to fears over the levels of government borrowing”. He also announces that budgets will revert to March after all from 2018.

December

·         Theresa May’s update on the Brexit negotiations amounts to a statement that Christmas means Christmas, especially for turkeys. Boris Johnson’s attempt to make a joke out of this results in his early return from a summit meeting in Istanbul.

·         Sir Alan Duncan celebrates Christmas on St Helena. He is rumoured to believe that he is Napoleon Bonaparte (who died in exile on St Helena) and to be plotting to take over the whole of Europe. He refuses to accept that the EU has already done that.

·         In her Christmas message, which has been shrouded in advance in total secrecy, Her Majesty the Queen sensationally announces her abdication with immediate effect. With characteristic grace and tact, she blames no-one in particular but laments the state of the world, saying “It is time for Quexit.” She adds, “And, just in case a certain person is deluded enough to think that he might fill the vacancy, there are great advantages in hereditary monarchy. So my successor will definitely not be King Nigel the First.”