Omegonthesane wrote:Does anything we do influence the actual outcome of a second ref? Like is GAZELLE checked if we get heads & tails?
Well, heads and tails is the same as getting both tails, but if you get both heads GAZELLE is checked, but it doesn't influence things, it just checks if you'd backed the winning side. Anyway:
Even the hard-line right of your party greet the news with only token protest. The Heil grumbles about U-turns, the Outrage mutters darkly about crawling back under the European yoke. But the arguments are muted, the tone grumpy rather than defiant.
‘The cause hasn’t gone away, of course,’ says Dennis Dent as he clears his papers from the Cabinet Room table.
‘Of course. You’ll be back.’
‘Not me. Gardening and an evening pint watching the cricket for me. Leave it to younger men to fight the battle for Britain.’
You feel a little sorry for him. He spent most of his political life campaigning to quit the EU, but you suspect that his time as Brexit Minister has been a sharp shock to those long-held convictions. Over the last two years, the country has been careering towards a terrifying precipice into the unknown, and even the maddest ideological plan does not long survive contact with pitiless reality.
‘You think it’s not over, then?’
He turns at the door. With his shoulders hunched and his hair in birds-nest disarray he looks like any other disappointed pensioner. ‘Fungale will be back. He’ll breathe on the embers of UKIP and blow up a firestorm of xenophobia. The British just don’t like foreigners, you see. Foreigners make them feel inferior – or just equal, which to a Brit is every bit as bad. The funny thing is, I think we could have made it work. If we’d switched back to a manufacturing economy, turned the country into a tax haven, abolished employment laws, and opted out of foreign aid and human rights, I think we could have made a decent fist of going it alone in the world.’
‘I dare say we’ll find out sooner or later. This is the era of referendums. What was it Pericles said? The public’s moods are like the tantrums of an infant? All that’s left for us politicians is to play the indulgent parents.’
‘You know, you’ve reminded me of something I haven’t thought about for many, many years. It must have been when I was about three or four years old. I got in a strop with my mother and announced that I was leaving home. Mother got out the loaf and the butter, made me a sandwich, wrapped it up in a handkerchief, and waved me off at the door. I got as far as the end of the road and then came back.’
‘Is that some kind of lesson?’
‘Wouldn’t matter if it was. Nobody learns.’
He shrugs and goes out.
THE END
...
So, there you have it. Best possible result, country not ruined. You didn't get ousted in favour of a horrible right wing clown (which happened to me when I played it. Though, well, not alone in that...)
You also didn't have to pull your eye out and replace it with a magic rock, which, given the authors, might have been a thing that happened. Maybe that was in the NHS section.
Also, no mention of Ireland, which seems a bit of an omission, it being something of a big deal.
Personally, I found it humourous and informative, until the part when we met with the PotUS, and it seemed to get darkly serious from there, or maybe that's a few years of retrospect coming through, or maybe just me.