SHORT STORY: Doughnuts:
The doughnuts had failed to de-escalate the situation. Most people trace it all back to the doughnuts. There is now a folk memory of how they must have glistened under the strip lights, slowly becoming inedible.
Ted stared at them. His team of the small, provincial call-centre that had just been made redundant by the large, multinational corporation it was part of. He’d bought the doughnuts to literally sugar the message of impending unemployment. His team stared back, with still, cold fury.
Later on, he was staring back at the cold embrace of a German lager. He was watching the bubbles settle when Cheesy Carl walked in. Tall, otter-like. Always up to something dodgy, always associating with someone dodgy.
“I’ll have one, if you’re offerin’” he said as he approached the bar and settled in.
Over a pint, or three he told the tale of the day’s woe. Vaguely talked about the pale, soap bubbles of his pleasure. The stretching shadows of his plans, already being laughed about by several deities. He also told him of his hatred of the people he worked with, his general blind fury at society and how it would be better if everyone just did as they were told.
This was a powerful German lager. It almost had voodoo qualities. There are now historians who contend that the lager was responsible, not the doughnuts. In that sense, it was what Germans call a Schnappsidee.
“I know some fellas” said Cheesy Carl “Who think the same as you”. Cheesy Carl pecked at a bowl of chips with mayonnaise. Ted always thought that was disgusting.
Within a week, he was in an anonymous, suburban house. He was surrounded by the kind of people who put three flags on their Twitter Avi. Who support football teams with a high percentage of white players. Who refused to wear a mask during the last pandemic. Who ban products that use gay couples or black people in their adverts.
Yes, those kinds of people.
Ted was swept away in their patriotic fervour, their righteous fury. He felt at home and smiled as a shadowy man with a laptop gave them funds. Which gave them agency. What they really lacked, thought Ted was a name. He said as much. A decent, quirky name. The group already called themselves The White Wolves.
“What about The Doughnut Party?” he said. They laughed. “What goes around comes around”.
There was a long and powerful silence, as they considered it and then accepted it as a really good idea. Then a slow, lingering space where Ted was voted as leader.
Within months, Ted became the kind of person who put normal people off their breakfast, appearing on TV news shows and politics programmes that put people off their lunch. He became a fixture on newspaper reviews and radio phone-ins. His base (if you could call it that) was builders, readers of tabloid newspapers and people, gradually growing dissatisfied with the current government.
Because as their children starved and their houses flooded, they got fed up with the current bloke. As they looked at the bare, plastic desert of supermarket shelves, they experienced a slow-burning, righteous anger.
Of course, from the outside, one could see that they were entirely and utterly responsible for this parlous state of affairs. It was almost akin to sitting in the smoking remains of one’s house and crying to the empty, godless sky: “Why didn’t no-one tell me about the local pyromaniac?”
But no. The anger of those who consider themselves to be dispossessed is like a narrow river. It can be made to flow wherever powerful people want it to go. A stream can become an ocean with the right conditions.
And so, it came to pass that Laptop Man arranged a meeting. He told him, over a mineral water for him and a German Lager for Ted that there was going to be an election. “Obviously” he said “We don’t have the funds to fight a full election.”
“Evidentially” said Ted. Evidentially was a word he would not have known, let alone used six months ago.
“But” he said “If we target the right seats, we can go into coalition. We’ll cut a deal – he resigns, you can be PM. You appoint your own cabinet.”
Laptop Man swung the expensive gadget round, and took him through a long and tedious PowerPoint presentation (has there ever been a short and interesting one?) of graphs, pie charts and spreadsheets. Of pictures of the type of idiot whose appearance on TV made most people want to kick their screen in. Who would be The Doughnut Party’s MP’s.
At this point, one of Ted’s migraines kicked in. The cause of which was the biggest change of his life. Or possibly: dickheads who use yellow text on a black background on PowerPoint presentations.
The Doughnut Party won enough seats to hold the balance of power. The morning after the election, he held a breakfast meeting. The PM nervously sipped coffee and pastries; whilst Ted enjoyed his mug of builder's tea and a bacon butty.
“It’s over my friend” he said, as he placed his feet on the desk. “The people have but spoken.”
“But surely –I contend, that I could assist, possibly guide your good self and the er, the er, the er, The Great Ship Of State, through the parlous waters of, er-”
“Write another book. Someone might read this one. Spend more time with one of your families. Enjoy those lovely trips abroad, with Russian prostitutes and Colombia’s finest.”
A mug hit the table. “How dare you, I should bally well-”
“Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My. Office.”
Later that morning, he held a press conference outside Downing Street. “The people are in charge now” he said “Not the puppets. I’m not a politician. I am the man in the street. I serve them, not my own interests.”
It is true that Ted was The Man In The Street, but only in the sense of how Sid Vicious saw it.
Of course, all this was a red rag to a bull to some people. There were marches and pogroms and small, horrifying acts of violence. People stepped gingerly over homeless people and starving children. The people were in charge, so that was OK.
Wasn’t it?
On Ted’s first day in office, he was asked to write his Letters Of Last Resort. These are the PM’s instructions on the launch of Trident missiles. They have to be handwritten and a copy is placed in the safe of every Trident submarine.
Under the avian eyes of a senior civil servant, Ted wrote the words “What Goes Around Comes Around” on three sheets of headed notepaper.
“You can’t do that!” said The Civil Servant.
“Mate, I just did.” said Ted.
Fast forward six months, the bridge of HMS Thatcher. There has been no contact from the Royal Navy for four hours. They can’t get Radio 4. The Captain opens the safe, reads the LOLR and sees the words “What goes around comes around”.
Keys are turned and buttons are pressed. Something phallic and incredibly destructive leaves the submarine, quietly hoping to liven up a dull Tuesday by incinerating some Russian children.
“May god help us all” he says.
Unfortunately, it’s too late for that. Humanity failed to exist about an hour ago. Ted stormed out of a meeting with the Belgian Ambassador five hours ago. Who insisted on ordering chips with mayonnaise. Within an hour, Ted has ordered a nuclear strike on Brussels. By the second hour, everyone else have joined in, not wanting to miss out on this display of macho bullshit. By the third hour, most of the world is smoke and ashes.
It is thousands of years in the future. Humanity is recovering, somehow. Displaying a resilience that is somehow admirable, but is also hopeless at the same time. A haggard, ursine figure stands in a cave, lit by torchlight. His followers chant his name, as he repeatedly draws a shape on the wall, a circle with a circle at the centre.
He grunts loudly six times, droops his knees slightly and raises his hands in the air. He points at the symbol. He repeats the series of six grunts.
“Wug goz arun, comeroun! Wug goz arun, comeroun!”
He looks at his followers, questioningly. And as he is beaten to death with rocks, we learn again: the doughnuts had failed to de-escalate the situation.
