Fatal Ambition by Nick de Bois

Author:Nick de Bois [Bois, Nick de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Political
ISBN: 9781739930806
Google: hPiozgEACAAJ
Amazon: 1739930800
Publisher: 3rd Step Broadcast
Published: 2021-09-03T05:00:00+00:00

monday 20th october, 9.00am cabinet meeting room,10 downing street

The Cabinet Secretary, the country’s most senior civil servant, looked around the Cabinet table and shuffled the papers in front of him with a nod to the Prime Minister. That was enough to end the subdued chatter amongst the ministers in the room.

It was perhaps the most inadequate room imaginable for meetings of the highest decision-making body in the government. The only redeeming feature was that for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer it was just a short walk from home and their private offices, since they quite literally lived above the shop.

Three brass chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, trying to add some measure of style and dignity to proceedings, but serving little purpose in providing adequate lighting for such important meetings. The Cabinet table itself couldn’t comfortably seat the number of ministers who inelegantly squeezed themselves around it at least once a week. Purchased during the Gladstone era, in the second half of the nineteenth century, its full splendour was hidden beneath a green baize table covering, which itself hid a rigid rubber mat for added protection. The boat-shaped table top was not original – Harold Macmillan ordered it in the late 1950s but was apparently a great admirer of the huge original oak legs. These were more than sufficient to cope with lots of banging of hands, the traditional way to show support for one thing or another. Solid mahogany chairs crowded around the table, with the Prime Minister’s, the only one with arms, set midway along one side, in front of the marble fireplace, facing the windows that looked out onto Horse Guards Parade. The only picture in the room was a copy of a portrait of Sir Robert Walpole which hung ominously above the Prime Minister as if passing judgment on the incumbent’s performance.

“Good morning everyone, we have only one matter before us, so I will ask the Foreign Secretary to begin.”

Tomlinson sat back in his chair and looked over to James expectantly. Some of the PM’s less generous colleagues thought he looked less expectant and more relieved he hadn’t fumbled his lines as he left the real substance of the meeting to be thrashed out by James Cleaver, the new Foreign Secretary.

This last desperate throw of the dice to salvage the British economy by re-aligning with the EU meant Tomlinson was the prime minister who was presiding over the country’s greatest national humiliation since the retreat from Suez in 1957. His colleagues around the Cabinet table knew he had to be left in place to complete that humiliation before they sent him packing. Today was that day. Today the Cabinet would settle the policy as well as his fate.

James took stock of the room, knowing it was also a day for his Cabinet colleagues to judge whether or not they should back him as the next leader. How he performed mattered.

They already knew he was still popular in the country, witnessed how effective

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