Are those heady days of the Rose Garden still pulsing through "Dave" and "Nick," charged with adoration and latent sexuality? Has the "special relationship" cooled? Does Nick feel spurned & cast aside or is he still awkward, blinded by his enormous coalition-crush of early May?
I always imagined Count Von-Osborne watching the sunny, rose garden love-fest from behind a hidden window, pulling his cape tight as protection against his rejection. In Suey world, he fell for Dave when their eyes first met across a muddy rugger pitch at 12 and George has stayed faithful ever since, despite taunts of "Oik" and Dave's frequent flirtations with hoodies and huskies and Cleggs.
It's possible that they have all three come to hate each other with a passion. Perhaps they address each other coolly by their real names:
"Gideon." (terse nod)
"Morning Nicholas, David, shall we get on?"
Perhaps Gideon detests what he sees as David's middle-of-the-road, softie, liberalism, whilst David is secretly horrified by Osborne's zealous, axe-wielding rampage. Perhaps Nicholas acts as mediator, regularly having to pull the other two apart as they come to blows. (More latent sexuality, but neither would ever admit it....)
Or perhaps Osborne is the true puppet-master. Maybe Nick and Dave sit there, nice-but-dim, while Osborne wields the levers of power, dreams up the next strategy and tries to stop the other two from flicking through back issues of Tatler.
Maybe Nick doesn't even get to go to the meetings any more. Maybe after a month or two he was moved closer to the basement while his office was "cleaned" and now, only get's memos. (If the other two even remember to send them.) Maybe he sits there amongst the heating ducts, with one un-shaded light bulb flickering, trying to pretend he's still part of the gang.
In fact, it's a serious question. I would dearly love to know how the dynamic works when these three men - the most powerful in government - get together. I haven't noticed any public shows of unity between Nick and Dave lately. Osborne seems to be happily re-invoking Thatcherism-Plus - the true face of the Tories, but do Dave and Nick secretly urge him to form that Plan B?
I wonder. Is everything in the rose garden still.....well, rosy?
Or are they just three enormously privileged, out of touch, white, men, trying to find solutions for problems they will never, ever experience or understand?
I love the gay erotica undertones I'd have had less class and had them buggering in a rose bush lol
ReplyDeleteI wish you hadn't said that, Emma. That image will be going round in my head all day now [shudder] lol
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