by Stevan Balac
illustration by Iga Jasinska
Harvey Delauney Snogglesworth, President-At-Large of LSE Conservative Society, gives a quaint yet vivid portrayal of life on Houghton Street through extracts from his diary (written daily on the benches outside the Marshall Building, Lincoln’s Inn side, at 3.30pm – coincidentally when Pole Fitness hold their intermediate training sessions). As a bright young thing in the Conservative Party, he heartily engages in student politics and has ambitions of one day becoming a big hitter in British political media. This week, President Snogglesworth welcomes in the new cohort of Conservative Society members, manages to quell tensions with the Students’ Union, and avoids a dangerous delve into Russian geopolitics after a saucy dinner date in Mayfair…
Monday 26th September
Ahhh, the sweet smell of a new academic year here at LSE. It’s been a trying summer – Old Snogger’s Kensington pad recently fell through after Natasha’s father was extradited back to Bulgaria on completely bogus charges (those raspberry pickers were paid a damned fair wage, and I’ll not hear anything otherwise). So that leaves me renting a shoebox in the second year stomping ground of Bloomsbury before Dad gets his act together and takes the job at Lloyds. Que Sera Sera, as the bloke that cleaned the toilets at Rosebery used to say–that’s life kiddo–onto the next chapter. The internship with Rees-Mogg went up the Swanny as well – lost out again to UCL’s Tory prez, Giles H. Gobswallower–so I settled for a guest-spot on GB News every weekday at 11pm. No pay, I’m afraid–but damn good for the old mèdia de social–in fact I was retweeted by none other than Laurence Fox just the other week. Soooo… the plan is to settle for a reasonable, low stress-high dosh job post-uni with Dad whilst I get my life together, all the while building up a following until I can appear on Farage at the primetime 7pm slot.
Tuesday 27th September
‘Hell hath no fury… like a libtard scorned…’
Particularly those of the nose ringed, dyed hair variety that frequent the committee of a certain Students Union at LSE. Sophie, the esteemed General Secretary, was far too nosey with the ConSoc accounts, so now our own treasurer Argentinian Steve has to explain away the 12 cases of Port we claimed reimbursements for at the last Christmas do. You never see them giving Labour Soc shit for the Green Tea expenses at their LGBT therapy sessions, or whatever the hell it is they do. No matter – I gave her the Ol’ Snoggers charm and managed to have it struck from the record. God I’m handsome. God she fancies me. Finished up by 12pm so time for a quick one in George IV before lunch with Tash. Then fired off a few tweets I wrote yesterday about pronouns and people in dinghies, and drifted into a lovely afternoon nap listening to the gentle ping of all those likes and retweets.
I love this game.
Wednesday 28th September
A big day – tonight’s our inaugural Welcome Drinks for prospective Tory Soc members. It’s always a nice venue, we prefer the National Liberal Club, and generally like to chuck a grand or so behind the bar for Prosecco and cigars from last year’s membership coffers. The spotty gimps that actually follow politics usually congregate in one corner, talking about–God knows, macroeconomic inflation or something–whilst me and the chaps try and corner the new girls. The usual craic is to ignore the freshers and try and pull the Masters students, especially the French ones, but this year I’m determined to behave myself and put on a professional front now I’m El Presidente. Around 9pm we have a disgraced former backbencher come and do a speech–usually already half-cut–so the trick is get the Insta pics done quickly and get them stumbled out the door into a cab before they start getting a bit too ‘friendly’ with the waitresses. Anyway, off to Angelo’s to get the hair freshly curtained, pick up the suit from the dry cleaners and we’re off to the races.
Thursday 29th September
Fuck me. Monumental headache–puked a perfectly formed Big Mac back up into the sink when I got in last night. And had to delete some rather incriminating drunken images from the Society Instagram – of a certain South American Steven sodomising the statue of Gladstone in the Dining Room. Thankfully the tie round his head obscured his likeness from the general public, and I like to think old Gladstone–as a Liberal after all–would have approved of such adventurous gymnastic feats were he alive today. Speaking of which, I was just about to despair that this was about the only sodomy that did occur last night–when I awoke to a Insta DM from a certain ‘Katarina’, Russian Economics postgrad par excellence, and heir to a rather hefty gas pipeline empire. Managed to decipher the previous messages from last night and it seems not only did we mingle at the welcome drinks, but I’ve managed to wrangle myself a date…tapas in Mayfair tomorrow.
Hangover cures, anyone?
Saturday 1st October
Well cover me in shit and call me a Socialist; that’s the last time I date anyone without researching their family WELL in advance. I suppose, in retrospect, the first clue was the bald 6’5” gorilla, complete with Terminator sunglasses and earpiece, who chaperoned her to the table and stood in the corner of the restaurant, hands folded. Anyway, there was I thinking I could use my usual game and cunningly weasel my way back to hers–as is customary for Ol’ Snoggers–or at the very least have a few flirty drinks and some slap-up Spanish tucker. But the more I (like a gentleman) asked about her life, the quicker it became obvious that her family business dabbles into a rather wide array of industries. Some of them–not so much fossil fuels as firearms–bloody big ones. The type that fly through the air with a skull and crossbones stamped in fluorescent green on the side (hence, I gathered, the need for a security guard from the Neolithic Age). The same one who, just as the wine was flowing and Kat and I leaned in for a candlelit kiss, grabbed me by the scruff of the Ralph Lauren and unceremoniously dragged me across the room–forks, flowers and chorizo flying everywhere. Chucked out into the street with black eye and bloody shirt, I ran as far as my little legs could carry me. Specifically to the nearest off-licence, grabbed a bottle of Smirnoff and a packet of Marlborough reds and slunk away into the London night.
I’ll stick to the French next time.
Join us next time as President Snogglesworth makes his termly pilgrimage north to visit his chums in Cambridge – the heartland of Toryism – where he participates in a debate with their Conservative society, and is forced into a compromising position involving a toffee apple during a Rugby initiation ceremony…
