99 YEARS OLD AND STILL UNDERSTANDS LEADERSHIP...

THE first day of the new term at St Opposite’s School for the Leftward Leaning began, as usual, with the morning assembly where Jeremy, fresh from the electoral triumph confirming his status as Head Boy, addressed the school in a spirit of reconciliation. “Nyer, nyer, nyer, I’m still the Head Boy and you’ll all have to do what I tell you now,” he said and he sat down with a big smirk on his face.

Meanwhile, a large group of pupils who had never liked Jeremy anyway had left the assembly and gathered in the playground outside mumbling disconsolately and asking each other what they were going to do now.

Owen, the boy who had challenged Jeremy for the post of Head Boy, said: “Don’t look at me. It’s not my fault.”

“I told you I’d have a better chance of beating him,” a girl called Angela said, “but you were so pushy I decided to step aside gracefully and let you have a go instead.”

“I’m sorry,” Owen said, “I’ve forgotten your name. What did you say it was?” and Angela burst into tears and ran towards the girls’ toilets.

“I can’t understand how Jeremy won again,” said another unhappy pupil who used to be a prefect. He got 313,209 votes but there are only 230 pupils at the school and we all hate Jeremy.”

“And we voted against him,” said the unhappy pupil. “So how did he win?”

“It’s something called democracy,” said a bespectacled boy called Hilary.

“How does that work?” asked one of the less well-educated pupils.

“It’s from the Greek,” Hilary explained. “Demos is the mob, or those who turn out for demonstrations, and Cracy means crass or crazy. So democracy refers to a bunch of crass crazies organising demonstrations so they will get their own way. And they have thousands of votes.”

“You seem to know a lot about how things work, Hilary,” said one of his friends. “Why didn’t you stand in the leadership election? Why don’t you challenge Jeremy to a fight right now? Your dad was a prefect and he was a democrat too.”

Hilary shook his head sadly. “You never asked me to stand for the leadership,” he said. “And if you recall, you only got Jeremy to stand in the first place because there were two girls and one boy in the running and you wanted to equalise the numbers. And you’ve always teased me by saying that Hilary’s a girls’ name.”

“That’s not true!” shouted Yvette and Elizabeth who had lost rather badly to Jeremy last year.

“Stop this squabbling,” said Angela who had now dried her eyes and returned from the girls’ toilets. “The question is, what do we do now? We’ve all said in the past that we’ll never play with Jeremy again. May I assume that we all intend to stick to that resolution and we’ll refuse to become prefects?”

“Yes!” they all cheered. “Absolutely! Definitely! Totally! Never, ever, ever!”

“Unless he asks me to,” Owen said thoughtfully, rather spoiling the mood.

“Yeah, of course. That’s what I meant,” others then joined in. “Unless he asks us to.” And they wandered back in to the assembly.