
In the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election, reactionary members of the Labour Party are pondering their next move. Sir Eugene Nicks, Policy Advisor to the All-Portsea Conservative, Regressive and Imperial Association (established 1799), has a proposal for them.
As someone who was voted ‘Most Devout Tory in Portsmouth’ every single year from 1933 to 2015*, I am elated that the Labour Party is sinking faster than the Belgrano did after our brave boys put a few torpedoes in her backside while she was sailing orf. To those rats – and ferrets – who have fled the good ship Labour I say, ‘Come and join our crew!’ May as well; the difference between you and I is as slight as the difference between Donald Trump’s face and a piñata hung up for the express purpose of being smashed repeatedly with a stick.
I seldom find Tom Witsend comprehensible, but I do concur with him that we should not forget the accomplishments of Mr Tory Bliar (is that right, editor? Where I schooled we did crumpets better than we did spelling). After all, Mrs T** did say that New Labour was her greatest legacy. That’s good enough for me.
Of course Bliar made mistakes – we all do – but let us fix on the positives for a mo. He did, for instance, start good old-fashioned imperial wars against benighted lands that killed up to a million people. That bare-chested poseur Putin could learn from Bliar about not only how to slaughter masses of foreigners but persistently lie about it and, in so doing, properly alienate, well, pretty much everybody. Bliar’s now a consultant to some of the wickedest tyrants on Earth, so why doesn’t he charge Vlad the Impaler 300,000 guineas for some insider’s advice?
Something else we Tories in the Tory Party and you Tories in the Labour Party have in common is a disdain for the oppressed in our society – supposing there is such a thing as society, which there isn’t of course. You know the groups I mean; you’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you?
Between 2003 and 2005 – on Mr Bliar’s watch – racist incidents quadrupled in England and Wales. The New Labour years also saw a wholly innocent foreign fellow shot to death in a tube station. Other innocents were kidnapped and tortured by MI6 as part of ‘extraordinary rendition’ – and to this day nobody’s gone down for it! And rightly bally so. Then there were the front bench Labourites who slammed the wearing of the niqab. The illustrious list goes on…
As you can see, my Blue Labour chums, there’s delicious continuity between what happened under you chaps and what’s been going on with us at the helm: the Prevent scheme, post-Brexit hate crimes and much else besides.
Like us, Tory Bliar understood that the free market was as essential to human life as water, oxygen and Amontillado sherry. He had a stab at privatising things old Mrs T* wouldn’t even finger. He brought in academy schools (from which sprouted our free schools), gave malingering students a jolt by charging them tuition fees and allowed the tentacles of big business to grope the NHS like a seventies BBC TV star inadvisably let loose at a youth club.
Bliar’s Minister for Propaganda, Lord Darkness, said in 1998 that he was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.’ Certainly some people did get filthy rich from privatisation, just not the customers… or the employees… or the public at large. But that is the natural order of the universe, dear reader, and I say capital to it!
Until Comrade Coolbeans got in it seemed you chaps were still walking arm-in-arm with us on the Sainted Path to Glory, Honour and Punishing the Hoi Polloi for the Cock-ups of the Bowler Hats in the Big Banks. Alright, so that berk Millipede couldn’t scoff a bacon sandwich properly – it is pauper’s fare, mind – but he was more or less on the same blood-spattered page as us when it came to austerity. Same goes for his Dancer of the Exchequer.
One thing I’ve learned about the electorate is that, although they’re generally thicker than a file of all the people our current Foreign Secretary has ever insulted, they can see right through flimsy copycats. This is where you lot Ballsed it up last time. Rather than trying to be like us, you’d have served your careers much better by simply joining our ranks. It’s not too late, you know.
Post-script: I’m pleased to note that “Progress” is being made locally. Some of your lot have already promised to vote for our lot, and some of your top brass have always got along famously with our top brass.
*I lost this year to some chap who used to be high up in the opposition. Dave Squirrel? Reg Stoat? Something like that.
**May her name be praised.
Photography by Sarah Cheverton.