Kay and Derek’s ‘radicalisation’, as their daughter calls it, became impossible to ignore when they named their dachshund’s latest litter. Six males and two girls and of course they were named Nigel, Richard, Danny, Lee, Robert, Zia, Sarah and Suella. (Kay is secretly rather pleased the runt didn’t make it – she didn’t have to think about whether she would name him Rupert.) Previously their puppies had been given strictly non-political names – like Chips or Monty or Winston – and Kay had renamed Nelson when a neighbour got the wrong idea. There’s a saying about giving a dog a bad name, and you can’t call them something you can’t shout across a field without embarrassment.
That was the point when their daughter Meg stopped talking to them. They had been driven into right-wing populism by memes on Facebook, she said, and it was useless arguing with them. But it is debatable whether Kay and Derek have even noticed: Meg has been growing apart from Kay since she went to uni, and Derek, if he has considered the matter at all, assumes that her lack of contact is because she has, at last, bought her own toolbox. Their son Jonny, of course, still talks to them – he couldn’t really avoid it, working in his dad’s building company – but even he was a little disturbed by the puppies’ names. He pointed out, rightly, that Nigel is a cat’s name.
In many ways it is a relief Meg isn’t coming for Sunday lunch any more: it used to end in arguments about immigration or wokeness – even though Kay always stressed she was not a racist. At times it felt like she was starting every sentence with the words, ‘I’m not a racist.’ How could she be? Sanjay is a valued member of the local branch of Reform, and they all love Sanjay. Sanjay is down-to-earth, Sanjay buys his round, Sanjay chuckles along when Derek does his impression of the waiter in the Taste of the Raj curry house. Sanjay said it was a hoot! He didn’t say that his name is not, in fact, Sanjay.
The trouble is when they’re not like Sanjay and they want to take over. Kay is appalled by the two Turkish barbers on the high street: both because they’ve taken all her customers and because they’re always empty and so are, she fears, a front for money-laundering. They don’t take card, you see, and make you pay in cash – very dodgy. Kay wouldn’t dream of doing that at her salon Royal Hair Force: of course, she prefers cash, mainly because you get better tips. But she needs to give her loyal customers the option of paying by card. Or she will do, when the machine is mended. (It’s been out of action since the last tax year.) The Turks haven’t even gone to the trouble of thinking up a funny name for their hairdressers! Derek’s idea of ‘Boris Waves’ was very clever, Sanjay thought.
In many ways it is a relief their daughter isn’t coming for Sunday lunch any more: it used to end in arguments about immigration or wokeness
And then, of course, there’s the pressure on the health service – Derek had to wait four weeks to see Dr Gillani about his back! – and on public services. It was all set out very clearly on the leaflets for the town council elections, which Derek was going to deliver until his back started playing up again. The only downside of immigration that wasn’t mentioned is the one that is self-evident: its effect on housing prices. But that doesn’t really affect Kay and Derek, as their mortgage is paid off, and they aren’t planning to sell the rentals any time soon. That’s another thing – how can they be racist when one of Derek’s tenants is a black fellow? He’s very nice and doesn’t have parties or take drugs or anything. He’ll probably get back the whole of the deposit that Derek very sensibly insisted on.
It’s a relief, finally, to have a political credo that can be set out in full on an A5 leaflet. A lot of the fun went out of Brexit when it was bogged down in years of debate about non-tariff barriers and trade agreements and all the statistics that Meg used to bring out at lunch. They used to laugh at Meg for her po–faced determination to bring politics into everything and to shun anyone who didn’t share her views on everything. Now they have discovered it’s more fun for them to do the same. Kay now refuses to watch any celebrities who have been rude about Brexit or Reform, and Derek joined her the moment Gary Lineker left Match of the Day. It does mean that their telly is limited to reruns of Midsomer Murders, Dad’s Army and Only Fools and Horses – but that’s all they want to watch anyway.
Meg may have joined Momentum, but it’s Reform that has momentum. Kay can’t understand why when she tells her daughter what she thinks about immigration, she pulls a face, but a back room in the local pub cheers. Two of them were county councillors! Yvonne has actually met Nigel! She and Derek are finally being listened to.
They held a Reform party BBQ in their garden last week. The BBC had been predicting rain but they were, as usual, wrong. It was sunnier than anyone expected, Kay’s hydrangeas were in bloom, and Derek had mowed neat stripes into the lawn and replaced the gnomes. (One of them is black! Everyone noticed and commented on it! And weren’t being racist!) There had been a near-miss though – Derek had put the Union flag upside-down but they managed to sort that out before anyone arrived. It was lucky that Sanjay noticed.
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