One of the joys of a new parliament is learning about the interesting backgrounds of all the new MPs. For instance Katie Lam, the 34-year-old MP for the Weald of Kent, might seem like another cookie-cutter Conservative driven mad by Elon Musk to the point where she gives interviews to the Sunday Times about how she’d like to deport people who are living in Britain legally — and not just her party leader. But she has a much more interesting hinterland as a writer of stage musicals. And The Critic can reveal that she’s working on another one! Our team of interns have been going through her bins, and today we’re proud to bring you the first draft of Broadway’s next big hit: West Side Tories.
Act One
Kemi has taken over as leader of the Conservatives after a terrible election defeat, but she is undeterred, entering singing “I Have Confidence” before addressing voters with a solo: “You’ll Be Back”. Then a new MP, Katie, walks on stage, singing a childish song about the things she’d like to do in government:
When I grow up
I will be smart enough to answer all
The questions about Rwanda
That they ask when you go on Question Time.
Katie meets a veteran Tory, Bobby J, who explains that he used to be a centrist, but that he’s now left all that behind him, in the crowd-pleasing “(I’m So) Over the Rainbow”:
Someday I’ll get into my car
And drive to where the crowd all look just like me.
Where curry isn’t ever served
And we can joke ’bout foreigners
Like in the Eighties
Katie and Bobby join hands and sing a duet about how they might win over the electorate:“Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist”.
Act Two
Kemi enters, depressed because voters haven’t returned to her party. As the cast sing about “thirty-two small boats in Dover harbour”, she complains about her situation:
I am outgunned
Outmanned
And at PMQs, outplanned
I gotta make an all-out stand
I’m gonna need a far-right-hand man!
She appoints Bobby to her shadow cabinet, and he buys a new outfit to celebrate. The narrator launches into Bobby and His Monocultural Dreamcoat:
And when Bobby tried it on
He knew his Cameroon days were gone
Such a stunning coat of just one colour
How he loved his coat of just one colour
It was white and white and white and white and white…
Act Three
Katie is sitting in her office, singing about her vision of Britain:
All I want is a way to say
How I’d make a nicer UK
‘Culturally coherent’ is the phrase of the day
Oh, doesn’t that sound loverly?
Bobby enters and joins in:
All I want is a place that’s white
Let’s take Birmingham and make it right
Not a brown face in sight
Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?
But elsewhere, trouble is brewing. As the narrator sings in “Enoch and Sons”, Bobby and Katie are far from the only people with fantasies about deportation. Enter Nigel, who is depressed because every time he recruits an MP to his party, another one leaves. But the GB News chorus is on hand to cheer him up:
Go, go, go Nigel, you know what they say
Hang on now, Nigel, you’ll make it some day
Sha la la, Nigel, you’re doing fine
Our channel will back you one hundred percent of the time!
Act Four
The Shadow Cabinet is meeting, and singing about their admiration for the wonderful work Donald Trump is doing:
Left’s on the run in America!
Migrants must hide in America!
Troops on the march in America!
Rich crooks can go free in America!
But Nigel enters, with a warning for the Tories:
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Whom I’ll surely fool again
When the Brexit plan went south
They didn’t blame my old platform
They hear the words come out my mouth
And then join Reform!
Act Five
Outflanked by Nigel on the right and rejected by voters who don’t want their neighbours deported, the Tories begin to sink beneath the waves. Bobby sings a final appeal to the electorate:
Slowly, gently, our plan emerges from the murk
Grasp it, sense it, don’t ask how it might work
Turn your face away from the centrist dads who sway
Turn your thoughts away from tales of migrants’ plight
And listen to the music of the right
But Bobby is slain in a TV duel with Nigel. With his final breath, Bobby joins Katie in a duet about their dreams of mass deportation, “Somewhere (Else)”:
There’s a place for them
Somewhere a place for them
Board a plane, and they’re half-way there
Board a plane, and go who cares where?
As the audience weeps, the chorus sings a final reprise for their doomed love story: “The World Was White Enough”.
Curtain
