liz truss x priti patel: the complete story

26. July 2022, part 1

The journey back to London was grim. Liz spent the plane flight mostly in silence, sitting in the unfamiliar feeling that she would be returning to something worse. Boris tried to lighten the mood with jokes and chatter, but morale was so low that even attempts at polite laughter were abandoned. 

The night in Downing Street was surreal. Boris ate dinner with Carrie, even she tiring of this mess, as Liz drove back to Greenwich, Priti on the phone. 

"How does he seem?" She asked.

"His confidence is knocked, definitely. But he's trying to push through. He was making jokes earlier. I don't think he knows bad this is. And if he does he doesn't care."

"Well he needs to wake up." Priti said sharply.

"Was it that bad when we were gone?"

"It's bad Liz. There's going to be some kind of coup soon, I'm sure of it. People are planning on jumping ship. I don't know who, and I don't know when, but they're thinking about it." 

"Will you?"

"No. We promised not to and I'm sticking to it. And anyway, people only want to save themselves. They want top jobs in the next cabinet."

"Don't you?"

"I wish I had an answer. I have unfinished business with the Rwanda scheme but I don't want to publicly fuck up again. Maybe I need a break. But we'll see who the next leader is."

"We'll see." Liz said, sighing.

*

The following day, Dominic Cummings made a tweet: "If Boris didn't know about Pincher as he's claiming, why did he repeatedly refer to him laughingly in no10 as 'pincher by name pincher by nature' long before appointing him...?"

Boris was incandescent, his aides even more so, as another lie was exposed. 

"We're not going to survive this one. We're not!" His spokesperson fumed, and for once, Boris almost agreed.

"We can hold on for another week!" He urged.

"I don't know what the point is anymore, Prime Minister. Things will only get worse for you this week."

"We just need a good defence. It was just a joke, based on Westminster gossip, no one needs to know about the briefing."

"You set people up to be assaulted! Do you not see how fucked this is?" 

"Well, assault is a very strong word-"

"I don't like what you're suggesting. This is the problem with you, you don't think, you say whatever pops into your head, and it's us who have to clean up your mess."

"You say that and yet you're still here! I wonder if that 80K is something to do with it?" He paused, lowering his voice. "Amend the statement. I'm holding on as long as I can." 

That night, Downing Street amended their position, saying the PM was aware of "speculation", but any issues had been resolved or not a formal complaint.

*

Liz had just got off the plane from Switzerland for another flight to Bali for the G7 the next day. 

"You can't go Liz." An aide pleaded, but she was uncompromising. "He's not going to survive the week. You need to be here."

"I can't miss the G7 meeting. I have responsibilities separate from the PM. And I've spoken to him and I'm sure he can hold on for longer."

"You seem to be the only person who thinks that." 

"Well how would it look if we cancelled the trip and he stayed?"