Going Down in Flames

“Let’s face it – we’re screwed,” opines top Tory activist Trevor Fulcrum-Jings, giving his reaction to the Conservative Party’s lurch to the extreme right and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s increasingly anti-environmental policies. “I mean, the planet is doomed, we’re already in the grip of global warming and the ice caps are melting. So if the damage has been done, we might as well make the most of what time we have left to live it up!” The twenty nine year old banker has fully embraced Sunak’s apparent endorsement of a new culture of hedonism, which ignores the long term consequences of his polices upon the environment. “That’s what the new pro-car approach is about – you know, scrapping those silly twenty mile an hour zones, speed cameras, low emission zones and other traffic restrictions. We want people to drive fast, drive often and without fear of persecution! Let drivers enjoy themselves on the road!” he explains, speaking at the Tory Conference. “After decades of encouraging people to abandon the excitement of driving in favour of using boring and sensible public transport, we’re saying sod the trains and buses – we want more people on the roads, where they can take full control of their own journeys!” Fulcrum-Jings acknowledges that such policies will have a detrimental effect on both the environment and road safety, but contends that the current state of the planet makes such things irrelevant. “Sure, a few kiddies might get run over by speeding cars near schools, but with the end of the world imminent, might we not be doing them a favour? By the time they grew up, the world might be entering its death throes,” he claims. “As for the environmental concerns of more internal combustion engines pouring more pollutants into the air – who cares? The damage has already been done!”

Fulcrum-Jings likewise embraces the idea of easing environmental restrictions on companies, instead allowing them to release more pollutants into the atmosphere and rivers. “It will help increase their profits and with the world ending, why shouldn’t people be able to make as much as they can now, before it all becomes meaningless?” he asks. “Now’s the time to be filthy rich, buy those fast cars, huge mansions, party day and night and snort cocaine off of the breasts of super models, because pretty soon it will be over! That’s why we need to scrap worker proctections and outlaw trade unions – anything that prevents the ability of the ruling elite to indulge in one last pre-apocalyptic orgy must be destroyed!” The Tory Party’s apparent acceptance of the imminent end of the world also seems to be informing their increased tolerance for extremism amongst its senior ministers. “Look, most of the time politicians have to watch what they say because they have to worry about alienating voters, but with the end times upon us, they can now say whatever they like,” enthuses Fulcrum-Jings. “So what if Suella Braverman wants to cross the line and indulge in full-on neo-fascist anti-immigration rhetoric? Nobody cares! We’re all going to die as the planet fries! So why shouldn’t she finally speak what’s really on her mind and play to the knee jerk reactionary bigots who form the Party’s core membership these days? There simply aren’t any long term consequences any more! We can say whatever the Hell we like!”

But just why is the Tory leadership apparently so relaxed about the prospect of human extinction? Have they really accepted the inevitable or do they, in fact, have a secret escape plan that will rescue only them and their donors, while condemning the rest of us to oblivion? According to some sources, the answer might well involve a diabolical pact. “I’ve been assured by some of our top people that in the event of the end of the world, they’ve made provision for us ‘true blue believers’ to enjoy eternity in a guaranteed conservative paradise,” says right-wing commentator the Reverend Kevin Jammster, recently fired from TV station Bulldog News after exercising his right to ‘free speech’ by libelling, on air, the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Apparently they’ve cut a deal with Satan himself to actually obtain a section of Hell purely for the souls of true Tories and their supporters – it will be entirely autonomous, free from the usual devilish red tape. We’ll be able to do whatever we like, for all eternity. Of course, we’ll have to accept some sort of torments, but they’ll be vary mild – just the odd red hot poker up the bum and a bit of flogging. It will be just like being back at public school for most of our people!”

While some might find it strange, perverse even, that the traditionally pious Tory Party, that regularly pays lip service to God and Christianity, should be planning to decamp to the ‘other place’ in the afterlife. But, as Jammster explains, modern heaven simply isn’t for today’s conservatives. “The fact is that heaven has gone completely woke,” muses the faux clergyman – whose divinity degree was obtained from an online evangelical college for fifty pounds. “Too many too many anti racism campaigners, environmentalists and social justice warriors have died as a result of police brutality and heavy handed policing of demonstrations in recent years, (not to mention all the vegans dying of malnutrition). They’ve packed the place out and now you have to observe all that racial awareness, equality and wishy washy liberal crap up there. It is all very worthy and dull.” Moreover, according to Jammster’s top Tory sources, Satan offered a better deal. “All we had to do was agree to hasten the end of the world and generally spread evil in order to get our own special place in Hell,” he reveals. “The authorities in heaven wouldn’t give us any concessions – no privatisation of redemptions or restrictions on allowing in immigrants or benefit claimants, for instance.”

But the plan for a private Tory Hell does present some potential problems, Jammster concedes. “When the deal was struck, they naturally decided to have a colour bar – which obviously could prove problematic for some of our current top people, like Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel and, obviously, the Prime Minister himself,” he explains. “I mean, we can’t have some our leading lights, who have been instrumental in bringing us to the brink of catastrophe, excluded from our happy hereafter on a technicality, can we?” The solution has been for such leading Tories to fully and enthusiastically embrace bigotry, race hate and culture wars, doing everything they can to oppress and disadvantage minority groups. “The idea is that if they can be even more rabidly bigoted than white Tory bigots, then they will become honorary white bastards,” says Jammster. “That way, they’ll be allowed special entry to our own, glorious, little piece of Hell when the world ends.”