By ’Tunji Ajibade
CHAIRMAN: The guy will upset us.
MEMBER: He will?
CHAIRMAN: So you don’t know.
MEMBER: I know. He’s been cooking up some things in Number 10 of late.
CHAIRMAN: And you think I meant him?
MEMBER: Who do you mean then?
CHAIRMAN: (shakes his head sadly) What I know is that I won’t permit Lynch to lynch me.
MEMBER: O, him? What has he–
CHAIRMAN: –got to do with this? The usual dumb question.
Trade Union leader, Mick Lynch
MEMBER: You can at least show some decorum.
CHAIRMAN: Decorum? When you and the rest of the members of this committee just don’t see what I see.
MEMBER: You don’t even invite them. You’ve turned every meeting of this Labour Party Strategic Planning Committee into a one-man show. You call it emergency meeting just to keep everyone out.
CHAIRMAN: How do you mean, everyone? You are here.
MEMBER: You wish I’m not.
CHAIRMAN: Say what you will. This union leader, Lynch, has been doing a horrible job, hatchet job. On whose side is he even – the Tories, Boris?
MEMBER: The guy is doing the work his Union assigns him.
CHAIRMAN: Tell that to the Tories, they’ll believe you.
MEMBER: What do you believe?
CHAIRMAN: The Tories have more than us to deal with.
MEMBER: Who’s the other opposition?
CHAIRMNA: So you don’t see.
MEMBER: What?
CHAIRMAN: Lynch is winning the heart of everyone across the land, like Boris is doing at The Mail against us.
MEMBER: Speculation.
CHAIRMAN: I know how it always starts – the manner it started good for Boris in his first outing as a journalist.
MEMBER: You worry too much.
CHAIRMAN: I shouldn’t be the Chairman if I am not. I–
MEMBER: –lead strategic planning. I know.
CHAIRMAN: You don’t.
MEMBER: Maybe you don’t even want me to be here for this emergency meeting.
CHAIRMAN: Have you heard?
MEMBER: What?
CHAIRMAN: Lynch says, It’s a shame that Labour and others can’t show that they’re distinct.
MEMBER: Ehn-hen.
CHAIRMAN: Is that all you have to say?
MEMBER: What do you want me to say?
CHAIRMAN: Aren’t you worried?
MEMBER: Why?
CHAIRMAN: (exasperated) Lynch will lynch our party leader.
MEMBER: I thought you said you are the one Lynch wants to lynch with his tirades in front of TV cameras.
CHAIRMAN: Our party leader too.
MEMBER: Well, he hasn’t.
CHAIRMAN: Should we wait till he does? The polls may start going against us, you know.
MEMBER: You worry over what hasn’t happened.
CHAIRMAN: You want it to happen?
MEMBER: What?
CHAIRMAN: (an aside) What am I doing talking with this buffoon? (to MEMBER) See, this guy will finish us.
MEMBER: Us? I thought you said our party leader.
CHAIRMAN: Yes.
MEMBER stares at CHAIRMAN.
CHAIRMAN: See, Lynch has joined Boris.
MEMBER: When? To do what?
CHAIRMAN: Undo us.
MEMBER: You mean undo you.
CHAIRMAN: Put it anyway you like. It’s the same–
MEMBER: –thing we are talking about. No, sir, it is not the same thing. You want to save your job.
CHAIRMAN: Okay, I admit. But we can’t just watch them do this to our party.
MEMBER: Who and who?
CHAIRMAN: Boris and Lynch. I mean we have to push back at what the two say. But can we win in the court of public opinion considering the strikes all that?
MEMBER: So you know.
CHAIRMAN: That–
MEMBER: Anyway, you shouldn’t worry about what hasn’t happened to our party leader.
CHAIRMAN: It has happened.
MEMBER: What?
CHAIRMAN: The push back.
MEMBER: Good. Go on with it.
CHAIRMAN: I mean the push back from Boris.
MEMBER: I thought Lynch was the reason you called this emergency meeting.
CHAIRMAN: And Boris too.
MEMBER: Now, wait, CHAIRMAN. You can’t be confused.
CHAIRMAN: I’m not.
MEMBER: Then break this down.
CHAIRMAN: I do.
MEMBER: By combining Boris and Lynch?
CHAIRMAN: Yes.
MEMBER: You will lose your teeth.
CHAIRMAN: I’m not grinding bones.
MEMBER: You grind more than bones.
CHAIRMAN: How do you mean?
MEMBER: Boris is enough for you. Now you add Lynch. Here is a Union leader who–
CHAIRMAN: I know him.
MEMBER: You don’t. You know he’s good at those quotable tirades when journalists are around.
CHAIRMAN: Everyone knows that, the attention seeker.
MEMBER: Call him what you will. He’s winning the public over. And you know he has that sort of profile in the public space that many past union leaders would have traded their certificates to have.
CHAIRMAN: It’s the circumstances we find ourselves in and–
MEMBER: Good, those same circumstances demand that you stay off Lynch, and Boris even more so.
CHAIRMAN: How can you talk like that? You know this is my–
MEMBER: –job. I know it’s the reason you are doing all of this. But you may yet lose the job if you don’t conduct yourself as the time demands, just as our party leader is wisely doing.
CHAIRMAN: Ehn-hen. How do you mean?
MEMBER: So you don’t notice.
CHAIRMAN: I have to admit I don’t.
MEMBER: We are getting somewhere; you don’t ever admit to not knowing something. Our party leader is keeping a low profile.
CHAIRMAN: He shouldn’t, not when Lynch is calling him out so stridently, and Boris shoots at The Mail.
MEMBER: That’s the point. Sir Keir knows the next election is his to lose. So why lose what you already have. He let’s Lynch do all the shouting.
CHAIRMAN: He won’t even respond to those wild allegations from Lynch that–
MEMBER: –he has shifted Labour to the right.
CHAIRMAN: And of course Lynch is filling the vacuum on the left.
MEMBER: Good.
CHAIRMAN: How could you say that?
MEMBER: Because it’s good for our party leader and our party, and he knows it. The polls show he already has a government to run come next year, whether it is rightist or leftist; thanks to the Tories. Let only Lynch stay on the left. Known outcome of the next election is what matters.
CHAIRMAN: Is that how you see it?
MEMBER: It is what it is.
CHAIRMAN: But Lynch says our party leader has–
MEMBER: –five missions but nobody knows what they are. And you think our party leader should be responding to that?
CHAIRMAN: It matters to the public, and we may lose the public to the Tories.
MEMBER: The polls would have said so.
CHAIRMAN: Ehn-hen. So what do you suggest we do?
MEMBER: I suppose you already have an idea of what you want to do.
CHAIRMAN: (with excitement) I do, yes, I really do. I plan to set up a meeting with Sir Keir.
MEMBER: And tell him what?
CHAIRMAN: That he needs to–
MEMBER: –release a press statement. Then you call journalists and begin to explain. Of course you’ll respond to each of the allegations Lynch has made.
CHAIRMAN: Exactly!
MEMBER: Very typical. I’m sorry to say you’ve already lost your job if you try it.
CHAIRMAN: How do you mean?
MEMBER: Sir Keir is playing the politician, but you want to bask in the glory of being on TV and speaking to journalists as usual.
CHAIRMAN: But, it’s my job.
MEMBER: (stands up and walks away) Go ahead. But if you trouble Sir Keir too much over this, he will sacrifice you so that you don’t lose a sure election for him.
CHAIRMAN: Lose, how do you mean lose?
MEMBER: Let Sir Keir play his politics as he deems fit considering the room the Tories have created for our party; you lie low for now.
CHAIRMAN: But, but how can you say that when–? Look, I won’t let Lynch make me lose my job. Lynch mustn’t lynch me.
MEMBER: That’s if you don’t lynch yourself first.
tunjiaoa@gmail,com
