There is a very deep pit reserved in Hell for such as he… Tweet from a Boris-supporting Tory MP about Michael Gove
AND SO there is…
THE two men sit with their backs against the Eton wall, for even in hell there is a hierarchy. Boris Johnson is wearing baggy Y-fronts that burst into flames every hour or so. The pants remain unharmed but Boris is clearly unhappy – “Bloody asbestos pants.”
He grimaces as the pain dies down, knowing that it will return.
“Does one ever get used to that?”
A barbed chain bound to his chubby ankle attaches him to his companion in this corner of hell. Boris musses up his blond mop and leans forward, as if facing a television camera. He emits a series of elongated ‘ahs’ and ‘ohs’ and then looks down at the crowds he imagines to be below. He waves and puts on his best buffoonish face, the one he spent so many hours practising in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Are you on that zip-wire again?”
“Ah, yes. Proudest moment, don’t you know?”
“Only Boris…”
“Only Boris what?”
“Only you could do something so stupid and end up looking good. You’ve led a charmed life – you know that?”
David Cameron, who is wearing faded Union Jack boxer shorts, leans forward and glances sideways. His eyes burn red and as he looks at Boris, blisters break out on his pale skin.
“Oi, Dave – stop doing that. It’s bad enough with the flaming pants already.”
“You deserve every burn. You’re the reason we’re cooped up down here in Hell. And I’ll never let you forget that.”
“Hang on a minute, Dave. You’re the one who held that referendum to prove a point and then bored the arse off everyone trying to pretend that you supported Europe. You thought you’d win and when you lost, the whole edifice came tumbling down. You were so sure about everything – just like you used to be at school. Mr Bloody Entitlement. You just thought everything would go your way again, didn’t you, Mr Jammy Pants?”
“And why did I lose, Boris? Because you grabbed the opportunity to advance yourself at my bloody expense and then allowed everyone to starting banging on about immigration.”
“Ah, you’ve forgotten…”
“Forgotten what?”
“Every time you say banging on…”
“Ah, damn!”
A skeleton with a remarkable head of hair, a Tarzan sweep of hair, uses a hammer to hit Dave on the head.
“Stop that Heseltine!”
“It’s your own fault, Dave – and as for you, Boris, you ripped your party apart, you ripped your country apart and…”
“Yada yada yada. How many times to I have to hear you say that, Hezza?”
“How about for ever as that’s rather the point down here.”
Hezza points a shaky finger at the Boris pants, which burst into flames again.
“Hey, that’s only just happened. I wasn’t due a hot pants moment again!”
“Think of it as a two-for-one offer.”
Hezza takes his rattling bones off elsewhere.
Boris, glancing at his smouldering underwear, speaks again. “If we going to have to sit here for ever, perhaps we could have a go at someone else instead.”
“What, the Gove monster?”
Boris is suddenly animated. He puts on a prissy Scottish accent. “I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or built the team for the task ahead.”
“How long are you going to keep saying that?”
“How does eternity sound? I mean to say, Gove the Geek who pretended to be my friend and supporter, and then knifed me in the back at the last bloody minute. Man’s a scoundrel.”
“Oh do shut up, Boris. Anyway, talking of knives…”
A slight bearded man is passing through this privileged corner of hell with a pinched look on his face. Despite his obvious disapproval, he seems oddly untroubled by the heat down here. “You see I have the support of all my willing party minions. So I am not going anywhere.”
As usual, Comrade Corbyn is followed by little badges on legs, each bearing the slogan: “I’m for Jeremy.”
Dave has a faraway look on his face, remembering all those encounters at the dispatch box. “Even in Hell you don’t know how to do up a tie properly. And you might have the worshipful support of your believers, but have you looked at your back lately?”
The comrade refuses to rise to the remark – “I follow a new sort of politics” – and walks off, with the contents of the sharper objects from the cutlery drawer rattling in his ribs.
“And an old sort of politics did for you in the end, didn’t it?”
Dave turns to Boris. “Do you think he ever gets used to all those knives his MPs put there?”
Boris stands and shuffles round as far as the chain allows.
“I doubt it. That one Geeky Gove put in my back hurts like…”
“Like Hell?”
“Yes, that’s the bloody thing of it…”
And if there is a special place in hell where Dave and Boris are shackled for eternity, well, all this chaos, uncertainty and bitterness won’t have gone entirely to waste, will it?