Author’s note: It seems hard to remember now, but this was a time when the Conservatives looked like they might never win another election and worked very hard to ensure they wouldn’t by choosing a man whose initials sounded like an inflammation of the lower intestine as its leader.
A fun fact: the Editor at the time was Robert Khan, whose job required him to be at the Houses of Parliament a lot. So we both attended the night IDS was elected as leader. We can be seen in the background of a Sky News report pretending to fight. We also had our dinner table hijacked by Andrew Neil, who, it must be said, was very charming and completely unaware that we stiffed him with our bill.
The Conservative Party announced that after an extensive review period on the ethics of stem cell research and genetic manipulation that they were now ramping up for ‘electoral scale’ cloning.
A party spokesman explained that the original plan was conceived when it became obvious during the current leadership debacle that the only two seriously electable contenders – Michael Portillo and Kenneth Clarke – would not be acceptable to the party membership. It was felt that cloning could offer a mechanism for creating the perfect candidate. A process was then put in place to canvas opinion and create the perfect candidate. The result – Mr. Iain Duncan Smith – was a combination of all of the expressed preferences of the poll. The results showed a predilection for Margaret Thatcher’s piercing blue eyes, William Hague’s hairline and the raving right-wing policies of Enoch Powell. It is thought that the production of the clone explains why no-one had heard of Iain Duncan Smith until three weeks ago.
The party spokesman, Mr Iain Duncan Hague, went on to explain “Unfortunately, recent research has indicated that not only haven’t we got a chance of winning the next election but also no one who isn’t a Conservative actually likes Iain Duncan Smith. We therefore decided that the only solution is to start cloning Conservative Party members until we outnumber the electorate.”
The Tories spokesperson on ethics, Mr Enoch Thatcher, went on to explain that the decision had not been taken lightly. “We have carefully considered this delicate and contentious issue. We realise that this is an area that impacts vast areas of moral and ethical debate. But then we looked at how few votes we got last time and decided to say ‘Bugger it’, lets get the production line rolling.”
The party Chairperson, Ms Margaret Powell, denied that this would move the Conservatives away from being an inclusive party supporting a variety of different viewpoints. “We will have as many different viewpoints as we have always had within the Conservatives – ie one, which is to get us back in power where we belong as quickly as possible”
Alarmed supporters of Michael Portillo and Kenneth Clark have immediately set about their own research programmes, however the initial model – a swaggering, cigar smoking transvestite with a penchant for bullfighting – is said to be ‘disappointing’.
After the announcement a media furore immediately erupted with the Daily Mirror predicting a world overrun with “Toryautomotons” and a ‘Planet of the Apes’ style crushing of the human race which would be subjugated my the Evil Tory Overlords. “I bet we’ll even end up with Charlton Heston discovering the Millenium Dome at the end” commented Piers Morgan, the paper’s Editor, from the top of a smoking model of a destroyed London entitled “ToryWorld” which the paper had constructed for a photo shoot. New Scientist, however, believed that the cloning may actually be counter-productive with the clones being imperfect copies of the originals. Leading geneticist Professor Hugo Z Hackenbush mused “On the other hand most hereditary Tories are the result of years of inbreeding anyway, so you probably wouldn’t notice a couple of extra ear-lobes or a major mental disorder”
On being asked for his opinion, The Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, shimmered from on high outside Downing Street in a robe of whitest white and proclaimed, “Verily a plague of Tories shall be cast over the land and Babylon the Mother of all Harlots and Abominations of the Earth who shall be known as ‘Thatcher, Thatcher the Free Milk Snatcher’ shall return and and there shall be wailing and grinding of teeth” On being asked whether the Labour Party would ever resort to cloning Mr. Blair and his entire cabinet adopted the same beatific smile, shook there heads in unison and said simultaneously “No, how could you think such a thing?”
Sex and Drugs and Growing Old 