Trembling, Nigel took to the lectern. 96 seconds ago he had heard the results - and acknowledged defeat with a crab-apple grimace and a vacant stare. His voice cracked as he spoke, words tripping over dead dreams in the claustrophobic desert of his throat. "I have never been happier", he lied, as a hot flush rose to his ears and the hissing audience blurred and refocused before his eyes. As rehearsed in the concrete bunker of his brain, he turned on his heel and he ran from that place. With wet, downcast eyes he blinked and disappeared, lost for a moment in the blizzard of photo flashes that immortalised his humiliation.
That was the moment that Thanet rejected Farage, stared down by our footzoldiers who lined the front row in silence. But the irony is that even Craig Mackinlay, the nominal Tory victor, didn't emerge as much of a 'winner' either. The real winners were the Nation of OOOG, divinely led by the Prophet Zebadiah Abu Obadiah. The Prophet's victory speech proclaimed our triumph - but was taken as a joke by some and proof of a slipped grip on reality by others. The former charge we refuse, but the latter has some truth in it.
Britain can keep its imagined reality, we don't want it.
The General Election demonstrated just how hollow this constructed reality is. The election - with all its attendant procedure and personage - presented an image of Westminster as the ultimate seat of power, the place where White men in dark suits compete to control your life. But they don't control your life, by and large. The powers which do - those which politics tries to exploit - are those that define the normal, those normalising norms which construct 'common sense' as a form of control. Democracy is good. Britain is good. Anyone who disagrees with either claim is bad.
If all that power is can be confined to politicians arguing about detail but silently agreeing on everything else, then that is an impoverished definition of power. Power is diffuse, embodied, enacted - it makes Farage sensible and the Nation of OOOG insane.
And that is why we won the election: because we were the only party to recognise that votes and seats don't equal power. We could have won or lost on their terms and we would still be insane, dangerous, or an increasingly elaborate joke. To talk about the on-going effects of colonialism or to call British soldiers murderers is so outside the permitted limits of dominant discourse that it can't be anything other than insane. The act of defining what is normal and abnormal, permitted and forbidden, rational and nonsense is a fundamentally political function - but it does not reside in politics alone.
We could've just boycotted politics, like Russell Brand pre-Millibandwagon. We could've just locked ourselves in our compound and railed against the reality-TV-style election being filmed at the end of our road. But inspired by visions, our Prophet led us out of our secrecy to reclaim the normal and subvert the mental imperialism that gives it primacy. We made the abnormal explode back into Little English sitting rooms, confronting the quiet lives of nice people with the brutal demands of their comfort.
We haven't lost our grip on reality, we just don't want yours.
"But you didn't really win" - bleats a faceless critic, straining as he swallows 'reality' like it were fact. Like it were something other than invented assumptions shepherded into floating, discursive constellations. Like it's simple 'common sense' - that gives you legitimacy and leaves none for us. Reality as universal truth, self-evident like the terrorists we are depicted as: unthinking, inexplicable, medieval weirdos - not humans capable of reason, sincerity, or love.
I am the Party Secretary of Al Zebabist Nation of OOOG and I am as normal as you are. I have felt the presence of the Prophet - my Prophet - exploding through the subways of my mind. Shredding muscle, sinew and sensation alike, He inflates my capillaries like blood does once the fist is withdrawn.
Was our victory any more radical than that of the Tories? Was our campaign any more bizarre than that of UKIP? Is our religion any less reasonable than the blind worship of England - that wounded Leviathan made of real ale, fake history and potato-faced aggression?
It's not a problem to answer yes to these questions, but at least ask yourself why.
OOOG AKBAR