One of our members with contacts close to the government has passed us this copy of a memorandum from Jon Swift II to Rishi Sunak. As the copy is of poor quality and hard to read, we have shown the full text below.
Swift Consolidated, Inc
MEMORANDUM
Date: April 1, 2023
To: Rishi Sunak
From: Jon Swift, II
Re: A MODEST PROPOSAL – PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
Rishi
As you know, I am pleased with the progress of the Conservative Party since 2010 – your policies have been capital-friendly. But I am disturbed by the recent polls, which suggest that you may be letting power slip away before the job is finished. So here is some advice, based on the work of our mutual friends in Tufton Street, that I, as a major backer of your party, trust you will follow.
Deliver
I am glad to see that you show no signs of back-sliding on Delivery: I am sure that you will come under pressure to cap energy prices at affordable levels as other governments have done. I need not remind you that such caps have a significant impact on the profits of major energy companies and would be very unpopular. The same is true of the other issues listed above.
Disinform
On Delusion, I am impressed by the work that Chancellor Hunt is doing – given current performance, it is not easy to maintain a stance that the UK has the fastest growth rate in the G7, but he seems able to deliver the line straight to camera. And he has positioned himself (and you) well to take credit for the inevitable fall in inflation.
On Division and Distraction, also, it is hard to fault what your team is doing. I would single out Suella Braverman for her use of inflammatory rhetoric – it is no small achievement to blame 40,000 economically inactive (at government insistence) people for the economic woes of 68 million.
It is of course harder to blame the victims of the cost-of-living when their numbers approach a majority of the population, and I think it is wise of you to give that job to Jonathan Gullis and Lee Anderson, whom you can easily ditch as “not true Conservatives” should the need arise.
But I am afraid that you have not been active enough in Discouraging your opponents. The Conservatives have traditionally presented an aura of invincibility: the current state of the polls and the constant U-turns and leadership changes have given the opposition a confidence they lacked for many years. I would urge you to ensure that Lord Ashcroft’s polls and the YouGov polls, at least, start to present a story of Conservative come-back. The BBC can then report these as fact.
More importantly, while you and I know that your government’s wider economic record is risible, the public as a whole do not know. You should keep pushing the line that at a time of international – make sure to stress international – crisis, it would be irresponsibly risky to let a radical left-wing government take power (best not to try explicitly to blame them for the Global Financial Crisis, just say “look what happened last time”). You can count on most of the media to support this line in the run up to the election.
More positively, I see that you have an active social media campaign to persuade traditional Labour voters that Starmer is now so far right that there is really no point voting for him. I see a lot of mileage in this: if you are clever about it, you can create a paralysing two-pronged attack where Labour cannot propose any centrist policies without being seen as too far right and cannot say anything left-wing without being painted as lunatic left wingers.
Distort
Here, you have taken some important steps. Bringing the Electoral Commission under the control of ministers gives you enormous power to ensure the right result at the next election; the new election boundaries should help quite a bit at the margins and requiring voter-id is a proven tactic in the US for voter suppression.
There is still more you should learn from the US: an angry mob outside polling stations in swing seats demanding to see the identification of anyone who looks foreign or under 35 can be very intimidating, and might make a determining difference in close-run races.
Destroy
As I said at the outset of this memo, I am concerned about the polls – even assuming you follow the advice above, on current trends, you could still lose, and I would not be happy about that. I want to be sure that you are taking all necessary steps to deal with this risk. You need a plausible excuse to delay the elections if you cannot win them, and that will require violence on the streets (which you must be able to blame on your opponents, of course).
So far, the violence has been on the part of far-right groups, so you need to change that. Your policy of criminalising climate protests and inflaming the workers’ strikes is sound. I am sure it is not beyond your abilities to find ways of ensuring that some of these erupt into violence.
I need not remind you that, should you relinquish power, an incoming administration would set up investigations and inquiries into corruption and other issues which would be extremely damaging to you and your party.
Regards,
Jon
Jon Swift, II
8 comments so far
https://thestrawberrypost.wordpress.com/2023/04/01/april-fools-day-historical-pranks-jonathan-swifts-predictions/
Magnificent – nagged me to revise Jonathan S on the web.
This is brilliant
So good it could almost be true..
It is corrupt. There is nothing good about it!
This cannot possibly be true.. please tell me that it is not authentic. If it is, why hasn’t it been leaked to all the major newspapers to ensure that the public are aware?
The memorandum itself is satire. But it is true in the sense that all the tactics (except delaying the next election, and possibly manipulating the polls) are things this government has already done. Much of it has been covered in some (though not most) of the major newspapers: what is different about this piece is that the whole jigsaw is assembled for view.
Depressingly true