Fifty-First State
“October 29th, 2015. 1 a.m.
The restaurant was almost empty. British elections are held on Thursdays because it had been decided, during the reign of Queen Victoria, that the best way to persuade the British working man, paid on Friday or Saturday, to go the polling stations and vote, was to hold elections on Thursdays, when his beer-money would have run out. The short but intense weeks running up to election day in Britain had passed and the Thursday polling day came. Voting had ended at nine a...nd now most of the MPs who had spent six weeks in their constituencies, asking for the votes of their 70,000 constituents, were still there, watching the votes being counted or at victory or defeat parties. The journalists who had been covering the election were at their papers; party staff were assembled at headquarters.
Only a few senior civil servants were dining, and planning the future. And two renegade MPs who already knew they were still MPs, had taken advantage of an early result to sneak off from their victory parties to work out what they would be saying the next day, on Westminster Unplugged.MoreLess
The restaurant was almost empty. British elections are held on Thursdays because it had been decided, during the reign of Queen Victoria, that the best way to persuade the British working man, paid on Friday or Saturday, to go the polling stations and vote, was to hold elections on Thursdays, when his beer-money would have run out. The short but intense weeks running up to election day in Britain had passed and the Thursday polling day came. Voting had ended at nine a...nd now most of the MPs who had spent six weeks in their constituencies, asking for the votes of their 70,000 constituents, were still there, watching the votes being counted or at victory or defeat parties. The journalists who had been covering the election were at their papers; party staff were assembled at headquarters.
Only a few senior civil servants were dining, and planning the future. And two renegade MPs who already knew they were still MPs, had taken advantage of an early result to sneak off from their victory parties to work out what they would be saying the next day, on Westminster Unplugged.MoreLess
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