With his head held high and his tail following dutifully behind, Cleggclaw stepped out into the television studio. He did his best to keep the fur along his spine from prickling up, but the gazes of the cats staring back at him, the cool, dignified glares, did not help matters. He crossed to the plinth in the centre of the room and placed himself firmly in the centre of it. He wondered if the Labourdors ever found themselves falling off the lip to the left, or the Catservatives ever cut their paws on the sharp edge running along the right hand side.
The room was probably the size of a small cavern, or a medium sized cavern, large enough to mean he'd have to shout. That was okay. He sounded more passionate when he shouted anyway. The cat in front of him, a grey haired tom by the name of Paxstar, locked gazes with him and nodded.
"You ready, Cleggclaw?" The glint in his amber eyes was impossible to ignore.
Cleggclaw resisted the urge to reply that 'hell yes' he was ready. He simply nodded and cast his eyes out over the audience.
Paxstar cleared his throat and said, "The first question comes from Brightfur."
A she-cat in the third row puffed up her chest and raised her mouth to the hanging microphone being lowered over her head by an intricate system of pulleys and several terrified maintenance cats.
"Your broken promise on training fees has meant that thousands of apprentices training to become warriors have had to pay back massive amounts of prey to their clan," she said. Cleggclaw groaned. She continued, "How can the clans trust you again on ... well, anything?"
Cleggclaw heard himself make a joke about the generosity of the audience, then launched into his explanation. It wasn't that he didn't believe it any more. If anything, with the rising numbers of disadvantaged students in universities, he believed more and more that he had secured a fair deal. It was just that he must have been asked this question a hundred times in the leadership campaign alone, and he'd be damned if it was what was going to put a Catservative majority in Den.
She nodded and seemed to accept his answer, in the sense that she understood she wasn't going to get a cover version of the 'I'm Sorry' song from him. Paxstar shrugged at Cleggclaw, then at Brightfur, but the question seemed to have reached the end of its usefulness. Paxstar then turned to a tabby tom with a vibrant purple stripe running from behind his left ear to where his left leg joined his body. Cleggclaw gulped.
"The clan union is stealing powers from Britclan and we need to bring these powers back to our own grounds. Why do you disagree with this fact?" the tom asked.
Cleggclaw realised the tom was relatively far back in the audience, which was unusual for a Ukitty when a member of the Liberal Democats spoke. "Because I don't agree that that is a fact. Jobs depend on the clan union, trade depends on the clan union, our very identity as an open and accepting nation depends on the union."
"We are finding it hard enough to feed our own clan," the tom retorted, "So how can we hope to feed the hungry mouths of other clans?"
"Well, first of all, we're perfectly entitled to ask them to feed us," Cleggclaw began, taking a few hesitant steps forward on the plinth. "Secondly, the amount of prey brought to us by cats from other clans far outweighs the prey we have to sacrifice to feed them."
Cleggclaw looked back up at the tom, who was now almost baring his teeth.
The tom almost spat as he said, "Well, I don't agree that that is a fact. And secondly, they are putting Britclan hunters out of work!"
That was where Cleggclaw faced his serious problem. At the moment, he had to admit that was true, but the abundance of options that could improve this situation threatened to overwhelm him. Why were Ukit so focussed on this one option?
"Well, to combat that, rather than withdraw from the clan union, we need to create more apprenticeships for young people in Britclan and make sure they receive excellent education, which they would be paying more for if the Liberal Democats had not been in this partnership!"
Uh-oh. He glanced at PaxStar, who looked at him as if he was Ed Milipup. The 'ohh's from the crowd made his stomach turn but, almost perversely, got his blood pumping around his body like he'd just caught a fresh rabbit.
"Are you seriously suggesting," shouted Brightfur, "That you should be thanked for raising warrior fees?"
"Oh, StarClan no." Cleggclaw shook his head. "I broke a promise, and nobody should have to thank me for that, but I did keep warrior fees fairer than they would have been under either of a Catservative or Labourdor majority."
Cleggclaw suppressed a grin as the subject of the clan union was dropped. As far as he could tell, he'd won that. He'd of course then thrown himself under in the path of a Two-Legs monster, but wasn't that his job these days?
After the session was over, and the audience had reluctantly applauded him with cynical, slow-moving paws, he lay back on a bed of leaves in the green room, and watched the Milipup flail around on the matter of spending on a large screen that covered most of one wall. Camtail, leader of the Catservatives was sitting in front of Cleggclaw and shaking his head.
"Can you believe these canines?" he muttered.
Cleggclaw opted not to mention that many of his party's members were either dogs themselves, or of canine descent. The party had become more feline in the last sixty-five moons than Cleggclaw had ever remembered it being.
There was a knock on the green room door, which Cleggclaw turned round to answer, then realised was lying wide open. Standing in the light cast into the corridor by the opening, was the Ukit tom from the audience who'd initially asked him about the clan union.
"Can I help you?" Cleggclaw asked.
The Ukit snarled. "We never got to finish our conversation, Cleggclaw."
There was something in the tom's eyes that prompted Cleggclaw to accept: hope. Not the hope that Britclan would become fairer, or even that the prey-cycle recovery would continue - hope that the Liberal Democats would fade into nothingness and it would be Ukit who held the balance of power. He saw that hope every time he looked in a Ukitty's eyes, and it frightened him. But he couldn't ignore political engagement in the public and call himself a Democat.
"We could talk here, if you like?" Cleggclaw suggested.
The tom shook his head. "No way. He's as much of a clanphile as you-" he motioned with his head to Camtail "- and there's no point me being outnumbered."
Cleggclaw shrugged and followed him out of the room.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Purplestripe," he replied, not looking back, "And you're going to hear a lot more of that name."
