Will we ever forget the day Britain started to prosper again?

“Shush,” came the response, “that’s Andy and Ruth, Gavin and David, They are going to save us from ruin.”

Excitement mounts as Britain awaits Andy and Ruth’s launch of Prosper

The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.

It is going to be, like West Ham, ‘massive everywhere we go’. We start slowly with some social media posts featuring Andy Street, who used to be one of those fake sub-regional mayors, and Ruth, Baroness Davidson, who once upon a time led the Tories in Scotland. The messages didn’t say anything of substance just teased, telling us that tomorrow (which would have been Sunday) or maybe Monday there would be this amazing launch of a new movement for the centre right or the centre or the centre or the centre right or something. Our breath was bated, we couldn’t imagine just what amazing insight and innovation these two political giants might bring. And the excitement mounted further as a parade of former Tory ministers returned to ex-twitter from their Blue Sky redoubts to tell us about the launch of this amazing project. Amber Rudd, Gavin Barwell, David Gauke, David Liddington, Dominic Grieve, an incredible parade of the great and the good, the wisest men and women of Britain.

The whole of Britain was hushed. Old men stood, staring bravely out at the street, awaiting the announcement from our saviours. Wives caught up in the passion of the moment smiled and wiped away tears knowing that, at last, the great people of our great nation were stepping up to rescue us from Farage, Starmer and Badenoch. Small children tugged at their mothers’ aprons asking about these people. “Shush,” came the response, “that’s Andy and Ruth, Gavin and David, They are going to save us from ruin.” The moment came as our heroes appeared.

Sat snuggly together on a tiny BBC sofa Andy and Ruth told us how untold millions of the politically homeless would return to the centre right if it talked more about business, good government and how all the people who ran Britain from 2010 to 2016 (when something happened that, like Voldemort, we are not allowed to mention but that was obviously bad) should be brought back to run Britain again. The nation relaxed on its sofa, comforted that, for the first time in years, they could sit down to Sunday lunch secure in the knowledge that everything would be just fine.

The airwaves and broadband routers of Middle England hummed with pleasure as Gavin Barwell told us how hard he had worked on this project - the “new movement” as Andy described it. Gavin, the mastermind of Theresa May’s collapse from a 20 point poll lead to nearly losing to Jeremy Corbyn, told us they had done some polling which showed that the median voter was in the middle of the left-right political spectrum meaning that the only way to win was to move to the centre. Now replete from their Sunday lunches, the men and women of Middle England smiled at each other, sipped their post-prandial cup of decaf with contentment. “Gavin could be describing me,” they thought in unison, “even though I voted for Brexit, am fine with hanging murderers, and think the BBC irredeemably left wing, I am that glorious central voter.”

Gavin even has a name for the project. A name reaching into Britain’s conservative traditions and touching the lives of the nation’s people: Prosper. Andy, Ruth, Gavin and the others listed on the lovely website (you’ve never seen the word ‘former’ occur so often in a list of names before) are going to “...bring together people from politics, business and public life who believe the country can do better”. It is amazing to read, who could fail to be excited by this, that Propser “...wants a more practical, honest approach to the challenges Britain faces”. The sofas of Britain have seldom been faced with such a comprehensive assessment of the country’s problems and the way to resolve those challenges. Great insights like businesses create growth, inflation should be controlled, and regulation stifles enterprise are joined by carefully coded statements that these sage former leaders know appeal to the man in the middle: “individual freedom tempered by social responsibility”, “working with other countries to solve problems we cannot fix alone”, “energy needs to be clean and affordable”.

It is quite remarkable, a monument to the phlegm of Middle England, that it hasn’t taken its Chinese EV into London so as to carry our heroes shoulder high, placing them - by acclamation - back in their rightful place controlling Britain’s government. The need to go to work, to dig over the big bed at the allotment ready for planting, or to complete the Airfix Churchill tank perhaps held Middle England back but it knows - those seven million centre ground loving Brits know - that the chance will come to do the right thing and return to the glory days of David, George, Amber and Nick. The days before that dark day in 2016 when misplaced populism stopped these fine men and women from doing their great job managing Britain’s decline.

Prosper UK is unstoppable just as previous grassroots social movements like Change UK and True & Fair swept all before them on waves of centrist enthusiasm and passion. Ignore that the media quickly moved on from Andy and Ruth to talk about Suella Braverman, a man being shot in Minneapolis, and Keir Starmer visiting Beijing to clean President Xi’s boots with his tongue. Gavin and the Prosper UK team know that their time is now and that Kemi Badenoch and the Tories will, next week or the week after, come crawling back, handing over the reins to the 70 or so formerly important people whose leadership is the only future for the Conservative Party and, of course, for Britain itself. We can look forward to the future:

“That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.”