My Dad recently took to me to cinema to see 'King Arthur: Legend of the Sword' for my birthday, I have to admit it was his choice and I knew little about the film and I was surprised when it turned out to be a parody of Brexit and the first General Election of 2017.
Spoiler alert, if you don't want to know that Guy Ritchie's most recent film ends with Arthur becoming King then don't read the title of the film or the rest of this blog post.
The film begins with Uther Pendragon in dispute with his closest advisors about whether they should rekindle old friendships with the Mage kingdoms who keep coming to Camelot on their war elephants, slaughtering woman and children and staffing their NHS, or seek Brexit. Uther's brother, Vortigern, who plays the part of that 'bloody difficult women' with just the right balance of humanity and femininity, then orchestrates a coup to seek the throne. To secure power Vortigen sacrifices those closest to him to the sea witches, first his wife Elsa and then Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, to summon a demon knight in the image of Rupert Murdoch to support him. During the battle Arthur, who grows up into a quiet, bearded man apparently disinterested in power, is sent away and raised in a brothel - Ritchie's choice of a metaphor for Islington is perhaps a little unfair.
Arthur grows up sticking up for the mistreated and the downtrodden flanked by Diane Abbot and John Mcdonnell who are played moderately well by Backlack and Tristan and in the most contrived and unlikely circumstances Arthur succeeds in pulling the sword from the stone and ends up the unexpected leader of the opposition.
In another unexpected twist Vortigern forces a direct contest with Arthur which her 20 point lead shows she shouldn't lose but Merlin, through the Mage, sends a snake to attack Vortigern and because of the huge cuts she has made to police numbers they damage her and Arthur escapes.
He returns however to battle Vortigern. This is a battle which he has to fight alone as Backlack was fatally wounded and retired dead until further notice after failing to show a full understanding of the costs of employing a police officer and Tristan was busy fully costing the new round table Arthur had ordered under the misapprehension that Camelot had a magic money tree. To strengthen her powers for this battle Vortigern makes further sacrifices to the sea witches, feeding them first those with dementia then the hungry schoolkids before throwing them her whole manifesto.
Vortigern appears to win but Arthur still lives so she tries to bolster her demonic powers by throwing her chief advisors to the sea monsters and seems on the verge of offering up the gays and women's rights if it will secure her thrown even for a few months longer, emerging as a demon knight. We now need to wait to see if Arthur can snatch Excalibur and destroy Vortigern as the film foretells.