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Epub ISBN: 9781473551985
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Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
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London SW1V 2SA
Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © Lucien Young 2017
Illustrations © Ollie Mann
Cover illustration by Ollie Mann
Cover designed by Two Associates
Lucien Young has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Ebury Press in 2017
www.penguin.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781785036965
To David Cameron, without whom this book would not have been written.
These days, whene’er I watch the news
Or finger Twitter’s app
Or else my Facebook feed peruse
With iPad on my lap
I cannot fail to darkly muse
‘The world has gone to crap!’
No, rather it has gone insane
For every headline brings
More horrors no one can explain
More arrows and more slings
And how the news fills up your brain
With such unpleasant things!
Piers Morgan, Kim Jong-un, 4chan
Exploding phones, the Mail
Revenge porn, war against Iran
The zombie knife and kale
‘Our long-term economic plan’
‘Fake news’, ‘too big to fail’
And meanwhile one can always hear
The endless cyber-scream
Of commenters who live to jeer
And spread the latest meme
Think piece, hot take, white noise, fear,
‘Screw you, 2016!’
But though the world is mad, all told
A balm has been supplied us
In Lewis Carroll’s tale of old
Let his example guide us
For he turned madness into gold
Like some comedic Midas
And it is he (I’m sure you guessed)
This tale is modelled after
A barmy bard, whose writing blessed
The world with joy and laughter
And likewise I shall do my best
To leave it somewhat dafter
And so the reader I implore:
Come with me, hand in hand!
We’ll swap our crazy country for
One madder and more grand
And as dear Alice did before
Fall into Wonderland…
Alice sat by her sister on the riverbank and wondered if she might not die of boredom. This seemed to her a rather drab mode of death. ‘Had I the choice,’ thought Alice, ‘I should prefer to be eaten by crocodile, or fall in a volcano.’ These thoughts aside, it was clear she needed something to do. But what? She might have chased a butterfly, or plucked some daisies for a chain, but both of these things would require movement, and that was out of the question.
As a last resort, Alice glanced at the book her older sister was reading. Its cover bore these words: ‘THE DEBATE SURROUNDING MEMBERSHIP OF THE EUROPEAN UNION’. She peeped inside, but saw in it no pictures or conversations. ‘And what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’ Moreover, she spotted among its strange, unwieldy words one that was all too familiar: ‘Brexit’.
Alice shuddered, for all that she had heard from grown ups over the past few weeks was ‘Brexit’ this and ‘referendum’ that. When she had asked what a ‘referendum’ was (for it sounded like a magnificent beast with tusks and a woolly hide) she had been told it was an important decision and, like all decisions in the grown-up realm, it was to be made with reference to trade deals, deficits and something called ‘GDP’.
Alice wished the world were not so stuffed with facts and figures – if only one could make decisions based on the first thing that popped into one’s head! Imagine the laws we might have then: free scones for every family; a blanket ban on governesses; even help to buy one’s dollhouse! Yes, she thought, that would surely be a fine state of affairs.
The day was hot and drowsy, so Alice decided to lie back, close her eyes and pursue this train of thought. She was lazily considering whether Dinah, her cat, should not be Home Secretary, when suddenly a white rabbit ran by. This would not have been so remarkable had the rabbit not been wearing a navy-blue tailcoat. But he was, you see, and so Alice had no choice but to take notice. ‘O, Rabbit!’ she cried, ‘what is your name?’
He stopped and turned to face her. ‘David Camerabbit,’ he replied, ‘though you can call me Dave.’ Then, twitching his nose, he reached inside his mustard-yellow waistcoat, pulled out a pocket watch and cried, ‘I’m late! I’m late!’
‘Late for what?’ asked Alice.
‘A very important date,’ said the Rabbit, ‘the twenty-third of June, to be precise. I need to appease my backbenchers, you see. Placate the Eurosceptics!’
And with that he went dashing off across a field. Alice, who was nothing if not curious, ran after him, as fast as her legs would carry her.
She ran and ran, then vaulted over a hedge, only to find her quarry waiting beside a rabbit-hole. The Camerabbit drew himself up and put on his best speech-giving voice. ‘I believe with all my heart,’ he said, ‘in the will of the people. As such, I see no option but to resolve the debate over our national interest by jumping in this hole.’ He then sprang forward and disappeared from view, leaving Alice in a quandary.
She was, at heart, a sensible girl, and knew it was rarely very wise to go jumping down holes with no knowledge of where they might lead. Yet there had been something in the Rabbit’s tone – rich and commanding, as though he had attended only the finest rabbit schools – that persuaded Alice she ought to just do it. And so, with a shrug of her shoulders, she leapt headfirst down the Brexit-hole…
Down, down, down Alice went, through a tunnel that soon widened to a vortex. Around her swirled a hurricane of ballot papers, French cheese and stingy Toblerones. Nick Robinson floated by, waving his arms and declaring that the laws of political gravity no longer applied. Beneath the whoosh of the air, she seemed to hear a nonsensical babbling, which spoke of ‘Remoaners’ and ‘Bregret’.
By this point, Alice realised that she had been falling for a good ten minutes (though, personally, she would have deemed them a rather bad ten minutes). ‘How long must I plummet?’ she asked herself. ‘If I don’t land somewhere soon, it shall be getting past teatime. And what if I were to carry on through to the other side of the world? Should I find myself in the Antipodes, where up is down, day is night and a barbecue is a cultural event?’
It struck Alice that all this plummeting would be easier to tolerate if only Dinah were there. A cat, after all, could show her how to land upon her feet. She had just begun to wonder whether Australian cats always landed on their heads, when – WHUMPH! – she hit the ground.
