‘Even if we allowed you to vote − which is never going to happen − you serfs  would only be allowed to vote once in a generation” declared Lord  Zimmers of Upper and Lower Sidders .

He was speaking at the  Annual Levee of the  High Tory Party at which not only nobles are received  but all the faithful, even down to those lowly serfs whose duties are to make and  serve the party’s much-prized Lamingtons at fundraisers, pay the tithe and render constant obeisance to and adoration of their masters and mistresses.

They must also learn to hold their tongues, as the Lord President warned. Otherwise they would suffer the fate of Masters Cameron, Lyn and Laces have and be cast into the utter darkness.

When it was pointed out that no action had been  taken against Doyen Flintheart, the Lord President said ”He is of no account, as even the republicans say, ‘A permatanned Indonesian born blow-in.’ It is a fallacy to say we did not dare touch him. He is of such insignificance we could not even bother to name the very heresy which has condemned him.”

Lord Zimmers was recently ennobled as a result of the decision of the Lord Prince, Lord Piperbull, that those who are appointed by the Lords Lobbyists and Powerbrokers to a blue ribbon seat would thus become MPs for life and never again face a Tory preselection.

There were entirely credible reports of the  ghost of William Charles Wentworth wandering the halls of his seat, Vaucluse House, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in one hand and a champagne coupe (which he insisted was  modelled on the breast of the Martyr Queen Marie Antoinette) in the other. He was joyously celebrating what he proclaimed as his final and delicious victory over the radical republican  Daniel Deniehy, who had destroyed Wentworth’s plans for what for a colonial peerage by ridiculing this as a “bunyip aristocracy”.

According to échotière Mistress Nicola Savage  in Wentworth’s  newspaper, The Australian, Lord Julian Mackellarvich concurred. ”Do you think I slaved to inherit Ambassador Rudelock’s seat only to have a gang of lowly serfs vote on my performance and my noble future every three years, ” he intoned.

“Once a generation,” a claque from the MOCRILLAA  (Moderate/Centre Right/ Leftist/ Anti- Abbott) Coalition intoned, alternating with Lord Sidders’ other warning like some shark alarm: ”Beware of branch stacking!”, as they prepared themselves like automatons to wave their orange voting cards whenever so instructed.

Soon every galah in every pet shop in the nation was repeating over and over , no longer “Four legs good , two  legs bad” ( a curious observation when one considers the number legs with which the normal galah is endowed, which I am sure, dear reader, you often do) but ”Once a generation” and ”Beware branch stacking, branch stacking, branch stacking !”

The proposition that branch stacking would follow the introduction of democracy was somewhat weakened when it was pointed out that the Lord Prince had come from an electorate which had enrolled more members than all the other electorates together.

The MOCRILLAA Coalition had been uneasy ever since Master Antonious Abbott’s confrères led by Master Toryhouse  had made the revolutionary proposal that the High Tories, as with almost every other party in the civilised world, should follow and introduce  democracy on the basis of ”one member ,one vote”. Indeed Master  John Rudders had proposed to Doyen Flintheart that even the Lord Prince be elected. Flintheart had told a rebellious assembly of serfs at the Field of Lillies that he didn’t think much of this initially, but was gradually persuaded that it would be good for the nation, and became strongly supportive after the horrors and destruction which followed the Great Bedwetting Incident of  September 2015.

Meeting the Lord Prince, Lord Lobby-Nosintroff screamed: ”That is why I warned him his earlier intervention could lead to a world war.”

The Lord Prince calmed him.  He told him and the leader of the principality, Lord Powerhouse-Amalgam of Greyhound, that putting off Master Abbott’s motion to almost the end of the levee would only anger the serfs and feed revolutionary sentiment.

”We must appear to accommodate them and accommodate them immediately with such a flood of words they will be confused. Lord Julian Mackellarvich is expert at that.”

The Lord Prince became pensive . ”The Prince of Salina, called The Leopard, once said that ‘For things to remain the same, everything must change.’ Instead, I say that for  things to remain the same, we must pretend to the fools, the serfs and the underlings  that we now propose that everything change and democracy be introduced.”

His audience nodded, preparing for the immense satisfaction of  so soon and so successfully perpetrating yet another fraud on the serfs and underlings.’

*Satire. No animals were harmed in the making of this item.