Breaking: Another Defector to Reform

Clacton. This Saturday afternoon. A beaming Nigel Farage introduces to a rapturous Reform UK audience the latest high-profile right-winger to defect to their party. Following in the footsteps of Nadhim Zahawi, Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, today’s surprise addition is the fourth, and most telling, traditionalist to join Reform in less than three weeks.

Only minutes ago, the Essex seaside town’s Women’s Institute Memorial Hall welcomed not a former Home Secretary, Secretary of State for Justice or Baghdad carpet salesman, but a one-time leader of the world’s greatest empire. Stepping forward to take the applause and flashlights on a rickety stage beneath a faded Union Jack – and to the accompaniment of a out of tune piano hammering out Jerusalem – was none other than Genghis Khan.

As silence fell, the diminutive tribal supremo, clothed in native dress and carrying a three-foot-long sword, addressed an audience of party activists and journalists. After many years literally in the wilderness, he had found his way home. Promising to make Britain vast again, he committed to taking back the Chagos Islands, and all other territory between the Indian Ocean archipelago and the south coast of England. ‘We will ride out, we will find plunder.’

In a wide-ranging policy speech, Mr Khan outlined a hint of what may be contained in his new party’s 2029 general election manifesto.

• Ukraine: Not frightened of the Russ, and dismissive of drones and GPS, Emperor Khan suggested a feigned Donbas retreat leading to an entrapment around the flanks by fast-moving archers on horseback. ‘It worked last time.’
• Children and social media: Take mobile phones from the under-sixteens and give them axes.
• Law and order: One strike and you’re executed.
• HS2: Journey times to the West Midlands could be improved by offering passengers leaving Euston five fast horses to use in rote, instead of a train.

‘Hold on a minute, Genghis, hold on,’ interrupted a delighted Mr Farage. ‘You know what, ladies and gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘you know that by-election in Gorton and Denton?’ Clutching Emperor Khan by the wrist and raising his arm, Farage delivered his punchline. ‘We have a candidate.’

After a five-minute standing ovation, Emperor Khan promised to live in the constituency – already one of his wives had been sent north with a bag of rubies to buy a property. His opponent, an extremist followed by savages from the east, George Galloway, would be laid waste. Remaining with the northern conurbation, Khan promised to sack Mayor Andy Burnham – and then sack Manchester. ‘We gallop north, we take the gold.’ Likewise London, where he promised to depose namesake Sadiq Khan and, in a move which his new party managers will see as a vote-winner, burn the capital to the ground.

Returning to that dispatched wife, Beth Rigby of Sky News challenged the tribesman on the alleged ‘unusual shape’ of his family. In response, he reminded the media that his 2,000 wives and 8,000 concubines are a private issue between himself and his family – the 25% of the population of Asia descended from him.

Challenged again, this time on an apparent U-turn on borders, Khan reminded the media he had ‘been on a journey’, all the way from Samarkand to Clacton-on-Sea. After a ‘frightening’ visit to Birmingham, he now preffered strong borders rather than the non-existent type his horsemen enjoyed while swarming across the steppe.

At a press conference following his defection, Khan said he had become ‘politically homeless’, pointing to ​differences with his Far Eastern contemporaries over agrarianism and the adoption of Tibetan and Chinese architectural techniques in place of the yurt.

In reaction to their loss, an emissary from the Mongol Empire said no one between northern China and the Caspian Sea was surprised by the move. It was ‘always a matter of when, not if, Genghis would cross the oceans in a small boat looking for Farage. Some people are High Middle Ages warlords because they care about their communities and want to deliver a better pillage for all. Others do it because of witchcraft and the lingering effects of a nasty dose of the Black Death,’ the spokesman added.

The empire’s initial statement also said: ‘The Mongol Empire did all we could to look after Genghis’s uncontrollable bloodlust, but he was very unhappy.’ They later issued a correction which removed the sentence, saying the original lines were ‘a draft version’ which had been ‘written in blood on the hide of a decapitated goat in error’.

Khan said the reference to witchcraft and the Black Death was ‘a bit pathetic’ and compared the Mongol Empire to the present day Conservative Party, ‘A bitter and desperate dynasty that seems to be in free fall due to internal strife, weak rulers and economic strain’.

In an attempted spoiler, The Guardian newspaper’s Temujin correspondent claimed to have unearthed the dismembered remains of pupils said to have been bullied by Khan when a schoolboy. Those who survived signed a parchment telling of their limbs being chopped off and tents being burned down by the nine-year-old.

Back in Clacton, an unconcerned Khan, speaking in perfect English, made small talk with Zahawi, Farage and Jenrick before, through an interpreter, swapping pleasantries with Lee Anderson. When introduced to Suella Braverman, the Mongolian threw the MP for Fareham and Waterlooville over his shoulder and, pushing his courage to its limit, carried her toward a nearby yurt.
 

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