Towards the end of 2023, the first meeting of the founding members of the STEM Political Party was held in Birmingham.
Membership was restricted to those who had either taken a degree in a STEM subject or had worked for more than five years as a scientist, technologist, engineer or medical practitioner. The requirements were loose enough to include economists who had a first degree in mathematics.
In 2024, they won their first seat in each part of the UK: by 2028 they were asked to form the government.
The immediate change noticed by the UK population was the total absence of sleaze and corruption. It was seen that having a government composed of professionals who relied heavily on actual facts, on a day-to-day basis, to do their jobs, meant that their tendency to use only verifiable data became the first, and not the final, resort when determining how to resolve any issue.
The rescinding of certain peerages was seen, at first, as petty payback, but the STEM Prime Minister was able to point out that she had taken these steps to redress the undue influence given to those who clearly did not have the well-being of UK inhabitants as their primary purpose.
Since their main political aim was to improve the lot of all citizens, the STEM Party’s redistribution of wealth by means of progressive taxation was widely supported among several other parties in Parliament: the tiny number of Conservative Party MPs, remaining since their almost total rout in 2024, were not able to affect the outcome of the vote.
On many issues, the Green Party were natural allies of the STEM Party, so this helped smooth the way to a ban on fracking, permanent high taxes on petroleum companies, a ban on coal mining and several favourable tax breaks for wind and solar power initiatives.
Once the Labour Party had managed to get behind the STEM Party’s call for Proportional Representation, the Labour Party was a wholehearted ally of the STEM Party’s desire to boost NHS funding, in inflation-linked real terms, to exceed that in force in 2010. The STEM Party, initially at the behest of their economists, encouraged cross-party working groups to tackle such issues as the re-nationalisation of the Electricity and Gas supplies, Railways and the Post Office: the remit of the latter proposal was widened to include a nationalised social media platform that would not be run for the benefit of immoral foreigners.
After Northern Ireland was encouraged to rejoin the Republic of Ireland, and Scotland became a nation state, the United Kingdom of England and Wales joined the other two parts of the British Isles as three independent members of the European Union.
Unsurprisingly, within a generation, the number of STEM graduates increased, and our countries started to appear in league tables for scientific achievements.
However, it always seemed to insiders that the STEM Party was most pleased with all of the British Isles’ countries frequently appearing at the top the World Happiness Report.