A number of commenter's I've had email me over my recent story 'A return to sanity' have asked for a few more details on that benighted country.
Well, that England is a republic, the royal family fled when the military took over from the then elected government. It has a two tier governance system of with a lower house run more or less by the group I call the New Coalition, most of their MP's are authoritarian and pragmatic using any means necessary to hold onto power, aggrandise and enrich themselves. Any seized goods from the Brigade campaigns end up lining their pockets.
The upper house is the Army Council and has far more power than the current House of Lords in the UK. It is they who negotiate the use of the Brigades, run the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Think Gestapo) and are a very shadowy confederation of ex-Army officers who are determined to hold onto power at all costs.
I'm deliberately vague about the New Compact, but it's a set of 'freedoms' initiated by the English Parliament to remove the need to pay for a police force, or rather the Bobbies on the beat part of it. Essentially it permits individuals and societies the right to mete out their own justice. What it led to was a bullying culture where might made right. The Army Council permitted it because they believed it would keep the nation divided.
Enforcers were the English Parliaments answer to the growing unrest caused by the unexpected result of the New Compact, think of them as elderly versions of Judge Dredd, pretty much all of them are ex sergeants and NCO's of the now defunct British Army, though a few are recently of the Brigades.
The conspirators of Bewl Water were mostly not caught… well for that crime anyway. Nor were their sponsors ever fully identified, the Islamic nation which did is keeping a very low and fearful profile because the English government has promised nuclear retribution on the perpetrator.
There are currently around half a million men in the Brigades under arms and that many young women tied into the system. Only the English (or non-Muslim) can retire.
The Brigades invaded Argentina by sailing in ships under a flag of convenience after the English Navy deliberately sunk neutral shipping making most flee to safe ports.
Other stories will follow eventually, not all will have happy endings…