Pearce Quigley

It's reshuffle Day at Number 10. Nicola Murray is so far down the list of prospective ministers that Malcolm Tucker doesn't even have a file on her. But when the job at the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship is turned down by everybody else, there's no option but to promote her to the Cabinet.

Peter Mannion, the Secretary of State for Social Affairs is told to launch his Coalition partner Fergus’s new “Networked Nation” policy at a school. Problem is, Peter doesn’t even know how to right-click a mouse and would rather be celebrating his wedding anniversary, but Stewart Pearson won’t hear otherwise. Fergus gets left in charge of drawing up a list of staff redundancies, and Terri Coverley is pretty sure she can make Fergus’s hit list if she works hard at under-performing, and finds help from an unexpected direction.

With Glenn gone, Nicola Murray is busy breaking in her new policy advisor, Helen Hatley. When Helen is accidentally photographed holding notes from an ideas meeting, Nicola is understandably angry. But Nicola is already stressed and all the while being simultaneously attacked by the rest of her party for endorsing an unpopular policy. And - even worse - her rival Dan Miller seems to be getting on very well with Malcolm Tucker.

With Nicola Murray and Peter Mannion both on the back foot after the unraveling of the key-worker housing sell-off policy there’s inevitably going to be a scramble for the moral high-ground while the smelly floodwater of scandal is lapping round their toes. In fact, several people are calling for some sort of enquiry. Everyone wants to spin the story, and everyone wants their own version of the story out there, by fair means or foul. But as more and more fingers get pointed the bigger the scandal becomes, finally threatening to implicate everybody. And in amongst it all, the department is trying to launch the new Carers Pass.

Stewart Pearson is running “Thought Camp” at a remote country house hotel, as the perfect way to re-engage the party with the creative cloudscape. No phones, no iPads. Peter Mannion can definitely think of better ways of spending the Easter weekend than ‘imagineering’ with Stewart, Emma and a bunch of back-benchers and party workers. Meanwhile, Phil is surprised to find the ministerial offices less than deserted. Glenn is there, working on the Fourth Sector backlog; Fergus and his advisor Adam are meeting with a young, attractive economist looking to strike an ambitious deal. Then all political hell is let loose when an unexpected and tragic news story breaks.