A Bit of Fry in the Lobbies
Following the results of the 1992 United Kingdom General Election, prominent actor, writer and comedian Stephen Fry decides to enter the world of politics. The general election resulted in a surprise Conservative majority of 23 seats. Fry's decision to enter politics was, as he later told journalists, heavily influenced by the result in his constituency of birth, Hampstead and Highgate. The new Conservative candidate, the little known Oliver Letwin, managed to succeed his party colleague Geoffrey Finsburg as Member of Parliament, This confounded the swing of the overall election, and Letwin managed to hold the seat for the Conservatives with a majority of 12 votes over the Labour candidate, former actress Glenda Jackson. This made Hampstead and Highgate the most marginal seat in the country that year.
Though he was entering the world of politics, Fry was still part of A Bit of Fry and Laurie when he made the announcement. He stated that he would attempt to be selected as the Labour Party candidate for his home constituency of Hampstead and Highgate. Thankfully for Fry, Glenda Jackson stated that she did not want to try for selection again, and Fry was easily selected to become the new Labour Party candidate. A Bit of Fry and Laurie came to an end in 1995, before the next election was held, for reasons unrelated to Fry's political career. Later episodes of the series would make reference to Fry's new coming career.
Eventually, the next election came in 1997, and Labour were sweeped into power with a phenominal landslide like none ever seen before. Oliver Letwin lost his seat by a colossal margin, by such a margin in fact that from then on Hampstead and Highgate was a safe seat. Stephen Fry's election to parliament was a highly publicised event, and all of the main news outlets had cameras inside the count for the seat. The new Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, did at times meet with Stephen Fry to see if he was interested in becoming a minister, but Fry always politely declined.
By the time that the Iraq War came around, Stephen Fry became extremely disillusioned with the Labour leadership, and became one of Labour's most fierce backbenchers. From the time shortly after the September 11th attacks, he had formed a close partnership with similarly inclined backbench MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, and became one of the inaugural co-chairs of the Stop the War Coalition in September 2001 along with Andrew Murray, a post he would serve for the ensuing 14 years, later co-chairing with Corbyn. Along with McDonnell, Corbyn and Dennis Skinner, he voted against the Iraq War. He came very close to resigning from the Labour Party, but decided that he would try to reform it from within.
By 2007, he was openly calling for Tony Blair to resign the leadership of the party, and openly celebrated his resignation when Blair eventually announced it in May of that year. His fierce opposition to the Labour leadership came to an end on 27 June 2007, when one Gordon Brown acceeded to the Labour throne, and therefore also as Prime Minister. Brown, who promised to be a different political figure to Blair, offered Fry a cabinet post in the cabinet reshuffle, and, with Blair out of the picture, Fry accepted. Succeeding Tessa Jowell, Stephen Fry rather appropriately becomes the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, though he focused on Culture and Media and left the Sport aspect mainly to his under-secretaries and appointed ministers. His work in this field as Culture Secretary was highly praised from both sides of the house.
Sadly for Fry, this would last less than three years, as Labour were booted out of power in 2010 by the combined forces of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. The coalition that ensued ended 13 years of Labour government. One more time, as soon as the result became clear, he did not partake in the Harman Caretaker Shadow Cabinet, and returned to the backbenches for the second time. When the new leader, Ed Miliband, was elected, he continued to stay on the backbenches and declined an offer of Shadow Health. Interestingly, he continued to do TV during this time, and had hosted the show QI amongst other things since September 2003. He had, in fact, hosted the show even during his tenure as Culture Secretary.
Although on the backbenches between 2010 and 2015, he made a number of memorable interventions during this time. He loudly voiced his praise for the government's gay marriage pledge, and celebrated both when the bill legalising it was enshrined in the law in July 2013, and when same-sex marriages began being conducted in March of 2014. In September 2013, Fry called on the Prime Minister to facilitate a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia due to their stance on gay rights, during a session of Prime Minister's Question Time. The Prime Minister stated that he did not intend to boycott the Olympics for this, but did state that he would try to bring up the issue in a number of other ways. Naturally, Fry was not contended with this answer, and later wrote to the PM. In 2014 he publically campaigned for a No vote in the Scottish independence referendum, which saw a surprisingly comfortable 58 to 42 margin against independence. In January 2015, he married his partner, Elliot Spencer, in a ceremony that he wanted to keep quiet, but was leaked to the press.
However, his days on the backbenches would soon come to an end as the Conservatives secured a surprise majority in the 2015 general election. Labour lost 30 seats, and the Lib Dems had collapsed, the latter being the main reason behind the Conservatives' surprise majority. During the 2015 election campaign, Cameron had intended to do an interview with the BBC ruling out running for a third termin the event of a victory in the coming election, but after mulling it over with his wife Samantha, he decided against it. After the election results became clear, David Cameron managed to continue on being the Prime Minister. However, this came at a price. Cameron had promised to hold an in/out referendum on the continued membership of the European Union. And this was a promise that he intended to keep. As a europhile, it was a big gamble indeed.
Meanwhile, Miliband had resigned the leadership of the party, and Harriet Harman was left leading a caretaker shadow administration in the meantime, for a second and final time. Harman, who had been Deputy Leader since the accession of Gordon Brown to the premiership, was now resigning. MP for West Bromwich East, Tom Watson, considered standing in the race for the deputy leadership, but eventually declined to run. The frontrunner, Stella Creasy, eventually succeeded in winning the Deputy Leadership by quite a margin. Tom Watson would later write that he completely regretted not standing in the 2015 Deputy Leadership election, as he thought he would have had a very good chance of winning it if he had run.
While this was going on, Stephen Fry was thinking that he might be the person to lead the Labour Party into the next election, and consulted with comrades McDonnell and Corbyn to get a consensus. McDonnell (who had run for the leadership in 2007 and 2010, neither time getting the required nominations to get on the allot) and Corbyn (who had been considering a run for the leadership this time) agreed to let Fry stand for the leadership. Before long, Fry announced his intention to contest the leadership election, a decision which attracted a large amount of media attention. His run was endorsed by McDonnell and seconded by Corbyn. Soon, he amassed the required nominations in order to get onto the ballot. Polling was conducted, and amongst the other candidates; Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, Stephen Fry consistently came out on top. Fry campaigned to take the Labour Party somewhat more leftward.
In September 2015, the leadership results were announced, and Stephen Fry was elected in the first round on 65.3% of the vote, a landslide. Though the election result was not very much in doubt, the amount that Fry eventually won by was not expected. Stephen Fry was now the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Labour Party, the first openly gay major party leader in the country. With his new job as leading the alternative to the government, Stephen Fry resigned from QI shortly after he was anointed the new Leader of the Labour Party. He also soon after resigned the co-chairship of the Stop the War Coalition, succeeded unitarily by Corbyn, who had previously been sharing the job with him. Clashes between Cameron were often humourous and often contained references to Fry's work. Sometimes, Fry would do the voices of some of his characters, with a humourous example being Fry invoking the voice of General Melchett from Blackadder Goes Forth for the entire duration of one session of Prime Minister's Questions, while being almost entirely serious during his questioning of the Prime Minister.
Soon, though, the Brexit referendum would rear its head and the fun and games would stop. Fry became thoroughly involved in the campaign for Remain, and shared a platform with, amongst other people, the Prime Minister, the former hosts of Top Gear, including Jeremy Clarkson who almost launched a political career of his own at the 2015 election, and most of the Liberal Democrats. Thanks to Stephen Fry, some say, the British public voted for Remain, by a margin of 54 to 46, surprisingly close to some people. This was cause for celebration by the forces of the Remain alliance, and severe anger fron the side of the Eurosceptics. Farage knew that he was dead in a ditch at this point, and opted to jump before he was pushed, and resigned the leadership of UKIP. He was soon succeeded by Diane James, UKIP's first woman leader and one who was committed to staying in her job, after some initial quakes. For Stephen Fry, his part in the Brexit referendum was praised from both left and right wings of the pro-EU bloc, for providing both intellectual interventions and times of comedic relief.
Also notable was the knock on effect all this had on the American elections. Some suggested that if Brexit was voted for, that there may have been an increased turn out from Republians who would have had an increased confidence that Donald Trump could be elected. However, with Brexit no longer happening, and with the influence that Fry had had over almost the last 20 years of both culture and politics, one Bernie Sanders became President-elect in November 2016. Although this was met with some disdain from David Cameron to have to work with a self-avowed socialist in the White House, he somewhat welcomed it in the face of his potential alternative. Donald Trump would call the election rigged, and continues to do so even today on his Twitter account.
2017 involved a lot of tensions within Cameron's own Conservative Party, and increasing public outcry at the policies of austerity imposed by the government. 2018 featured much of the same until October of that year. It was at the Conservative Party conference that David Cameron made the surprise announcement that he would plan to call a snap general election for May 2019 under the provisions of the Fixed Term Parliament Act. When Cameron voiced this to the conference, he was met with audible gasps. The Conservatives weren't too steadily in front in the polls, and in fact in some polls they were trending below Labour. When this announcement came, polling began noticably shifting.
Cameron, who was closing in on nine consecutive years of rule as the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, could not go back on this promise and by March 2019 he moved the bill under the provisions of the Fixed Terms Parliament Act. This was voted for overwhelmingly by almost every MP of every party, with only 10 MPs voting against, mainly Conservatives. Stephen Fry laid out his party's manifesto, which included commitments to many socialist policies, and also the rescindment of the Fixed Term Parliament Act, and the reinstatement of the amended Septennial Act; in other words how elections worked prior to the coalition's FTPA. Cameron and Osborne knew that there was no longer any turning back, as parliament had already been dissolved.
This was when a series of gaffes started turning the tides in favour of Labour, including a second Bigotgate, where Cameron was caught saying a voter was racist when he thought his microphone was off, after she had told him that she was voting for Diane James' UK Independence Party after decades of voting Conservative. By the time that polling day came along, Labour were in a consistent lead. The exit poll was released at 10:00PM, which suggested that Labour would be the largest party but short of a majority. This was met with jubilation from the Labour headquarters, and scenes of fear and dread in the Conservative HQ. Scenes were also positive in the Liberal Democrats' headquarters, where they were expected to at least double their seat count, at the expense entirely of the Conservatives.
Seats like Broxtowe, the seat of the Health Secretary Anne Soubry, began to fall back to Labour, as they had been before 2010. North East Somerset, seat of prominent backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg, also fell to Labour, and returning candidate Dan Norris gained the seat in a surprising result. It soon became apparent that Labour could achieve a majority after all, and at 6AM, Labour indeed crossed the threshold of 326 seats in the House of Commons, The Conservatives led by David Cameron had been defeated, and the Labour Party had been victorious, and Stephen Fry was now on his way to Downing Street.
The inner rumblings of the Conservative Party made itself known almost immediately, with outgoing Somerset MP Rees-Mogg calling for Cameron's head immediately. At the end of the day, Labour managed a surprising majority of 24, and managed to win 338 seats overall, up 106 from 2015. Cameron made one final speech at Downing Street where he said that while of course he found the election results disappointing, that he wished Stephen the best of luck for his future as Prime Minister. He said that, while he would not stand down immediately, he would indeed resign the leadership of the Conservative Party once his successor had been elected. He paid tribute to the five years of coalition with the Liberal Democrats from 2010 to 2015, and particularly to the four years of Conservative majority government from 2015 to 2019, stating that he believed that the country was in a very much better state than how it had been left to them nine years earlier. He paid tribute to the social reforms that they had been able to enact in the nine years of Conservative-led government, especially his achievement of same-sex marriage.
After this, the Prime Minister, his wife Samantha and their three children Nancy, Arthur and Florence, made their way into the Prime Ministerial car to Downing Street. There the Prime Minister went to meet the Queen to tender his resignation and recommend that she send for Stephen Fry. This was naturally accepted, and, after saying one final goodbye to her Majesty, left the building as David Cameron, MP. With his family, he then returned to his Witney constituency in a private car. It was not long before a private car carrying Stephen Fry and his husband Elliot arrived at Downing Street, the Prime Ministerial car waiting to take them both to Downing Street after he was appointed. The self-avowed royalist then met with Her Majesty the Queen, who asked him to form the new government, which Stephen Fry obviously accepted. The new Prime Minister explained what he was intending for his government to achieve in the next five years or so to Her Majesty, kissed hands, and then left Buckingham Palace. The Prime Minister and his husband Elliot then entered the Prime Ministerial car where they were taken to Downing Street, where an almost Blair-like crowd was waiting at the gates of Downing Street. Like Blair (in one of the only ways), he prematurely exited the car to shake hands with the crowd with Elliot.
After walking his way while shaking hands with the crowd, the sixty-one year-old Prime Minister made the first speech of his premiership, with his husband watching closely. He set out his intentions for the next five years, briefing the world what policies would be enacted. He paid tribute to some of the reforms that had been enacted by the outgoing government, especially that of same-sex marriage that David Cameron had also touched on. He announced that he would govern in the interests of those in need, and before long he finished his speech. Outside the door of Downing Street, the Prime Minister and his husband kissed for the cameras. After this, they both entered Downing Street, and the Prime Minister started the work of government.
First off, the letters of last resort. Secondly, the cabinet. Alan Johnson, a remnant of the days of New Labour, had intended to retire at the election after 2015, whenever that was held, but when Stephen Fry acceeded to the Labour leadership, he was persuaded otherwise with a shadow cabinet post. He was made First Secretary of State. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, succeding George Osborne, was Ed Miliband, Fry's predecessor as leader of the Labour Party. The new Home Secretary, succeeding Theresa May, was John McDonnell, one of Stephen Fry's closest political allies. The new Foreign Secretary, succeeding Philip Hammond, was Lisa Nandy. Jeremy Corbyn was made Health Secretary. The first telephone call made was to the 45th President of the United States, Bernie Sanders. President Sanders congratulated Fry on his election victory, and stated that he knew that they would be working closely together in the future. Meanwhile in the states, Bernie was going for a second term and Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Jeb Bush were fighting it out for the Republican nomination, in a race that was expected to be a very close-run thing.
This was seven months ago, and it is now January 2020. Stephen Fry is still the Prime Minister, but things have changed in the opposition. In July 2019, David Cameron's successor was elected. The five main candidates to succeed David Cameron were Theresa May, Philip Hammond, George Osborne, Boris Johnson and 79-year-old Kenneth Clarke. The run-off ended up being Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson, and the former Foreign Secretary managed to win by a margin of 15,000 votes in an extremely close membership vote. Philip Hammond is seen as a rather boring figure who was always after George Osborne's job. Meanwhile, after the over-doubling of the Lib Dem representation at the election, Tim Farron pledged to stay on until at least the next election. The repeal of the Fixed Term Parliament Act was started a couple days ago, when parliament reconvened for the first time after the Christmas break. At the same time, the amnended Septennial Act has been introduced to make sure that the powers were restored to what they were before. I have noticed trains in BR Blue and Grey starting to roll out across the National Rail system. My local Chiltern Railways was one of the first to go British Rail, apparently. I'd be here for quite a while though, going through all of the changes that I've noticed. The rest, as they say, is history.
