[Tony Blair and Gordon Brown face each other in painfully close proximity, like an Alas Smith And Jones head-to-head. A clumsily applied blurring effect is intended to shift our attention from one part of the frame to the other as they take turns to speak. This also keeps the pile of dirty Blair household laundry in the corner of this room in Number 10 conveniently out of focus.]

Brown: So, Tone, ye grinning backslider, I can’t talk about how I’ve redistributed wealth?

Blair: No, Gordy, you grumpy scrote; we don’t talk about progressive taxation any more.

Brown: Or about how I’ve reduced Third World debt?

Blair: Nope, nothing about spending money on fuzzie-wuzzies under any circumstances.

Brown: So we don’t mention the wars either, ye slippery Papist bastard?

Blair: ‘Fraid not, Gordy, you conspiring toad. Liberating millions of oppressed beige people isn’t well, er, relevant to Middle England.

[The blurring effect is already becoming intensely annoying.]

Brown: So no progressive taxation, no overseas aid, no defeating fascists? What can we talk about, ye sanctimonious sissy?

Blair: Low mortgage interest rates.

[A ghostly figure washing a Ford Mondeo outside a suburban semi-detached fades into view…]

Brown: Low mortgage interest rates?

Blair: Low mortgage interest rates. And high-fibre school dinners. […Jamie Oliver buzzes by on his moped, raising a thumb and winking…] And all of the services we’ve been throwing money at: city academies, foundation hospitals… […An orderly shovels bundles of twenties into an incinerator…]

Brown: …Chartered Diversity Facilitators… […Cuttings of public sector job ads from The Guardian spin one after another into the foreground…]

Blair: And, er, how well you and I get on with each other these days, you overrated beancounter.

Brown: But everyone knows I think you’re a two-faced, smartarse git. Why do we have to lie about everything?

Blair: I wouldn’t call it lying about everything exactly, Gordy, you micro-managing bore; we’re being macroeconomical with the truth, so-to-speak. Fact is, most of the people we need to win over to keep our jobs are selfish, small-minded bigots. They can’t see further than the end of their driveways, so we won’t show them anything beyond. Even if we did, they have the attention span of a chav toddler strung out on tartrazine

Brown: What, like Michael Howard?

Blair: Yah, that sort of thing. But we can’t say that either. It’s like when one of those godforsaken northern English towns elects some British National Pary councillors. We can’t admit the voters are racist.

Brown: But they’ve just voted for racists!

Blair: What we say is that they were “protesting against the failure of mainstream politicians to answer their legitimate concerns”.

Brown: Like their “legitimate concern” about having to look at brown faces in the high street? […An Asian man smiles through his beard as he hands over a newspaper in a Burnley corner shop…]

Blair: Yah, that sort of thing. No redistribution, no little black babies […African children gather around Bono who is dressed as the Pope…], don’t mention the war […John Cleese goosestepping through Fawlty Towers…].

Brown: Bloody hell, Tone, you toothy, treacherous tosser. The hypocrisy of it! It’s like stealth socialism. […B-2 bomber over Tora Bora…].

Blair: Gordy, mate, you’re a genius—albeit a spiteful, embittered, spleen-leaking genius: “Vote Labour: because stealth means never having to say that you’re socialist.” I’ll tell Alastair to get the T-shirts made. Fancy a couple of drinks while we plan how to stitch up my succession?

Brown: Don’t mind if I do. Mine’s a pint of Keynes—I mean Cains.

[Cut to Brown in the Commons bar patting his pockets looking for the wallet he “must have left back at No 10”.]