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Tagliatelle stared at the television screen before him.They had won the election. He was about to become the youngest prime minister the United Kingdom had ever seen, with a landslide majority for the Pasta Party.It wasn’t too surprising – the whole country had been crying out for change, for a strong Europhile with the guts to stand up to Donald Trump, who had been elected for a third term as US President despite the tariffs, the trade wars, the ridiculously high price of eggs. But it was still thrilling for Tagliatelle, seeing the results of the election flashing on the screen, and knowing now that all his vote-winning policies could finally be made real.“You did it,” said Penne, Tagliatelle’s adopted daughter and Director of Communications. “I knew you could do it.”“Yeah,” Tagliatelle said. “Now we have some changes to make.”
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Tagliatelle was enacting change. Not like Starmer’s Labour government before him, but real change.Prime Minister Tagliatelle, Penne, Spätzle, the new Foreign Secretary, and Rotini, the new Justice and Foreign Affairs Minister, had gone straight to the European Parliament. They managed to negotiate to rejoin the EU with little trouble – Trump’s tariffs had hit Europe hard, and the EU would take any friends they could get. While they were there, Tagliatelle charmed ex-NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, and the Dutch leader of the D66 Party, Rob Jetten. He considered trying to convince President Emmanuel Macron of France to come back to the UK with him too but settled for having him put in a mental hospital to get over his wife – perhaps Tagliatelle would come back for Macron when all his childhood trauma was resolved.Thanks to Penne’s successful spreading of pro-Pasta Party propaganda across the globe, the European Union were eager to allow Tagliatelle to lead their defence strategy, which was very much needed since NATO had crumbled when Trump conquered Greenland. Marrying Mark Rutte made Tagliatelle’s takeover of the European Union much easier. Although Rutte was significantly traumatised from his time at NATO, and he’d been pretty fragile anyway before that, the European community respected his efforts and celebrated the union between the two men. There was some confusion about Tagliatelle then also marrying Rob Jetten, creating a new European law to allow multiple marriages across the EU, but no one really objected.At home in the UK, uniforms were imposed for all citizens, minus the cabinet: blue and yellow, the colours of the European Union. Penne thought it was a bit authoritarian, but she wasn’t one to argue with her adopted father, who kept threatening to kick her out.Living in 10 Downing Street was pretty cool. Tagliatelle’s husbands were a bit useless around the house, but the Prime Minister had commissioned David Cameron as a maid. Rotini, who was living next door in 11 Downing Street, didn’t think much of David Cameron, and banned him from her house. This wasn’t a significant source of tension within the government, however, because Tagliatelle didn’t really want his maid getting distracted by Rotini’s new wife, Nick Clegg, anymore than Rotini did.
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“Tagliatelle, please can I have George Osborne?” Penne asked the Prime Minister one night, after a few weeks in government.“Ewwww,” Tagliatelle responded. “Why?”“I want his museum.”“Just take the museum then. We can nationalise all the museums if you want. And make them show pro-government propaganda.”“I think it would be easier if I had George Osborne. He’s Chair of the British Museum, so he knows all the right people and how it works…”“I don’t want to see him. Ever.”“Okay,” Penne agreed. “I’ll keep him out of your sight.”And so George Osborne ended up tied to a chair in 10 Downing Street’s wine cellar. Penne fed him, of course – she wasn’t a total monster. He was a very useful taste tester for the government household.Penne and Tagliatelle didn't really like wine, but it seemed like the kind of thing that Number 10 should offer to its important guests. George got to try all sorts of different reds and whites and always seemed to choose the most expensive ones, even when Penne hid the label from him. Tagliatelle found this a bit suspicious, but Chancellor Tortellini said that the government could afford it now that Brexit had been overturned. Number 10's important guests always found their wines to be most delightful.
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The government invited over lots of important guests. Mostly politicians who they wanted to study: for example, Farfalle had requested to be a SpAd for Ed Miliband. It wasn’t exactly clear how this would work – Tagliatelle had, of course, stripped all MPs of their power and banned all other political parties from operating as per his manifesto promises. But the Prime Minister, advised by Propaganda Minister Penne, decided he would let Ed Miliband continue making short videos about climate change and Great British Energy for the morale boost they gave to a few hundred crazy teenagers across the country. Ed had thus been invited to Downing Street to drink George’s wine and to be introduced to Farfalle, who thanked Tagliatelle profusely when he commanded that Ed take Farfalle everywhere with him.Spätzle, the Foreign Secretary, had also requested that Ed Balls be invited to Downing Street. Penne thought it would be nice for George to see his old podcasting friend (all podcasts except for Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s ‘The Rest Is Politics’ had been banned in Europe by Tagliatelle), and so she managed to convince her adopted father to go on a nice romantic trip to Amsterdam with his wife, Mark Rutte. Penne wasn’t sure if Mark would enjoy being in his old country, with Tagliatelle having (rather controversially in the Netherlands) banned everyone in Europe from speaking Dutch. But Mark had seemed pretty jealous of Tagliatelle’s second wife, Rob Jetten, recently, so maybe it would help soothe over any rough patches in their relationship.George and Ed hugged, reunited, and Rob Jetten promised Penne he wouldn’t tell Tagliatelle that George had sat in his place at the dining table. Foreign Secretary Spätzle invited Ed Balls to work with her, and he wouldn’t dare say no. Spätzle was living in Haworth, Yorkshire, but decided to let Ed Balls stay with his wife, Yvette Cooper, in London, for the meantime.Internet technologies had come a long way since Donald Trump had began threatening the EU, with both sides (and the third side, the UK, on its own in Starmer’s Brexit hell) operating in a sort of arms race. Although America, with Musk’s billions, was definitely winning, the EU and Rachel Reeves’s Cambridge-Oxford corridor had made enough advancements that Spätzle thought she could get away a long-distance, work-from-home sort of arrangement with Balls.“Ed, will you visit me more often?” George begged, looking pleadingly at his old podcasting partner.“Tagliatelle would be angry,” Penne said.“Maybe Tagliatelle doesn’t have to know,” Ed Balls suggested.“Tagliatelle is the Prime Minister. Of course he has to know,” Rob Jetten said. “I won’t tell him about this meeting, though. But, remember Penne, you promised to keep George away.”“I only promised to keep him out of Tagliatelle’s sight,” Penne said. “Ed, you can visit us at the museum if you want. I think we should throw a party there. For morale.”George stared. “I’m allowed out of the cellar? I thought – I thought – ”“Don’t listen to him,” Penne told Ed, rolling her eyes. “I take him on walks every week when Tagliatelle is away.”“I thought that was secret – I thought if Tagliatelle found us, he would – he would – ”“Are they hurting you, George?” Ed asked, urging.“No,” George said, quickly. “Penne brings me lots of wine. And sometimes David and Penne sneak me food. I’m very grateful to have such an important role in the government. Wine-testing. For morale.”Ed Balls seemed slightly startled but agreed to come to a British Museum event. Penne would have to convince her father to go away for a night again, but that shouldn’t be too hard. There was a lot going on across the world. Foreign Secretary Spätzle had left halfway through dessert to respond to an urgent call from the Prime Minister and leader of the European Federation.
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“It’s Trump,” Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the European Federation Tagliatelle had explained to Foreign Secretary Spätzle on the phone.There was a significant number of Americans in the Pasta Party, and now in the new UK government, all having fled from Donald Trump’s fascist regime.Conchiglie, the Health Secretary, was American, and living in a large country manor in Surrey with Peter Mandelson. Mandelson had been kicked out by Trump after a year as US ambassador, when a clip of him calling Trump's boy-toy Elon Musk a “fat, fascist clown” was leaked, and with the Labour Party dipping so drastically in the polls in the UK, he had made the politically savvy decision to follow Tagliatelle’s leadership.Tortellini, the Chancellor, was American too, and she was living in a large townhouse near Hyde Park with David Miliband. They’d met on a boat crossing the Atlantic, illegally fleeing the country after Trump began his fourth ridiculous wall-building project – this time to keep Americans in, instead of keeping the Mexicans and Canadians out. David had been thoroughly brainwashed by Pasta Party propaganda, for reasons which no one quite understood, and had helped campaign for them, even speaking in a debate where the only words he had managed were "I'm real," and the Pasta Party slogan, "for morale."The Americans didn’t really like Trump. He had been acting like a dictator since winning the 2024 election, having changed the constitution to let him run another term. And he’d won that election in 2028, by a rather suspiciously high margin when one considered how greatly the price of eggs had shot up under his presidency.In response to Tagliatelle becoming leader of a European Federation, Trump had began threatening to invade Canada again. He’d never really stopped talking about it, especially after NATO did nothing but collapse when he annexed Greenland, but the threat of a new European power, with a strong and capable leader, seemed to worry him. This is what Justice Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Rotini explained to Foreign Secretary Spätzle as they boarded a flight from Heathrow to Amsterdam, where Tagliatelle had been trying to enjoy a little break from his very stressful dictatorship, with his (favourite) wife, Mark Rutte.“It’s a mess,” Tagliatelle told his two advisers. “I would have just told you everything over Discord, but I’m worried about hacking. I don’t trust George Osborne being in my house. He’s very ugly.”“I don’t trust Nick Clegg either,” Rotini frowned – Nick Clegg was her wife, of course, living with her at Number 11 Downing Street. “And I don’t like that David Cameron is your maid. I think he waves at Nick from the window. Distracts him from his housework. But we can’t just kick them all out. They’re good for morale.”“At least I don’t have to see Osborne,” Tagliatelle mused. “It’s good that Penne keeps him in the wine cellar. And he does have a good taste in wine.”Spätzle shifted in her seat uncomfortably.“What?”“Nothing,” Spätzle said quickly, thinking of Ed Balls and George Osborne sitting at the Prime Minister’s dining table in Number 10.“Hmm…” Tagliatelle said, suspicious. “I will call Rob and check that everything is okay. We can’t have things going wrong at home while we are dealing with America.”“Why does Jetten get to be your regent ruler?” Mark Rutte sulked. He still wasn’t over the fact that he was only one of Tagliatelle’s two wives.“Because I need you here with me, of course,” Tagliatelle said. “And you wouldn’t want to be leader again, anyway. It’s much too stressful.”This was true, so Mark said nothing. Dealing with Trump had certainly been an ordeal for the ex-NATO Secretary General. He just hoped his husband would manage it a bit better.