Magna Carta 1215-2008

The people of Great Britain are today willingly locking themselves up and throwing away the keys as they mark the death of Magna Carta, which passed away this week after being set upon in the Houses of Parliament.

Magna Carta, the eight-hundred-year-old document in which were enshrined some of the fundamental liberties of the people⁽¹⁾, was born in 1215, after the brooding, treacherous and incompetent King John got drunk on power one night and was accosted by a large group of rebellious barons whilst on his way to meddle with the forest law, increase scutage⁽²⁾ and have one of those kebab things the crusaders kept banging on about. It was when the King awoke the following morning in a damp field in Surrey that he discovered that not only had he given birth to one of the earliest examples of constitutional law and sewn the tiny seed from which democracy might one day flower, he had also lost most of his power and inadvertently given Englishmen the right to equality under the law and not to be locked up without trial.

Given the circumstances of its birth, it is unsurprising that Magna Carta proved to be an unloved child. No sooner had it been born than its father attempted to disown it, even getting the Pope to annul large parts of it as "shameful and demeaning" and forced on the King by "violence and fear"⁽³⁾. Yet despite this, Magna Carta refused to go unnoticed. Thanks to its provisions, for the first time a council was set up to represent the people of England (or at least as many of them as happened to be rich and powerful and have a significant body of knights to back them up) rather than merely to serve the King. It was Magna Carta that first granted the right to be tried by one's peers and insisted fines should be proportionate to the offence, as well as decreeing that only competent people should be appointed to ruling posts (a provision which sadly does not extend to the roles of England Football Manager, Heathrow baggage handler or successful candidate on The Apprentice).

As time passed, the popularity of Magna Carta was to grow. By the reign of Elizabeth I it was being hailed as the embodiment of ancient English liberties, by the time of her Stuart successors as an indispensable limitation upon the powers of the Crown and it was under Magna Carta's banner that Parliament was to seize power from Charles I. Indeed, so useful was it in overthrowing the country's leader that, upon becoming that leader himself, Oliver Cromwell immediately started slagging it off to anyone who would listen, memorably describing it as "Magna Farta".

Despite such attacks, Magna Carta fought on, travelling alongside the common law to all parts of the British Empire and influencing the laws of countries from America to Zambia and encouraging our Georgian and Victorian ancestors to proclaim the superiority and nobility of the British system, even as they sold people into slavery, nicked their land and exported assorted criminals to Australia, where their descendants would one day be responsible for giving us Neighbours and Home and Away in return.

Throughout the 20th Century (aside from a brief funny turn in the 1970s when the British Government decided to help the IRA recruitment drive by locking up without trial anyone in Belfast who pronounced "H" as "haitch" on suspicion of being a terrorist) Magna Carta was hailed as a hero. Yet heroes are not always universally popular⁽⁴⁾. By the early Noughties, politicians in such enlightened countries as America, Britain and Zimbabwe found themselves publicly questioning Magna Carta's role. The aged document was said to be looking dowdy and old-fashioned, ill-fitted to a modern world where Presidents and Prime Ministers might need to lock people up in order to defeat terrorism/steal elections and/or look really tough in the pages of the tabloids and the bulletins of Fox News.

In America, Magna Carta found itself hooded, locked up and "questioned" without trial for giving succour to terrorists. In Zimbabwe it was quietly shot for giving succour to people who weren't Robert Mugabe. In the UK it staggered on, forced year by year to turn an ever more scarred cheek as its provisions were slowly whittled away by those whose job it was to defend it.

Just as it was born, so Magna Carta was to die. On 11 June 2008 an incompetent and much-disliked leader was to find himself locked in a room with a group of privileged people of negotiable morality eager to extract any concessions they could. Mere hours later, the body of Magna Carta was found bruised and bleeding its last on the floor of the House of Commons.

Magna Carta will be buried under several promises of knighthoods, the odd multi-million pound bribe, an "Ulster Says No" badge and a populace ever more eager to see their last freedoms destroyed in the name of an unwinnable and illogical "war on terror". It is survived - somewhat surprisingly - by former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis.

⁽¹⁾ as well as not-so fundamental rights relating to the ability of widows to inherit fiefdoms, the duties of towns to build bridges and the like, and a complete ban on any member of the D'Athée family being made a royal official.
⁽²⁾ a medieval tax, relating either to the right of a knight to buy himself out of feudal service or, possibly, to the use of obscure and long-disused words whilst playing Scrabulous on facebook.
⁽³⁾ By strange coincidence, these are the same reasons given by many people for wanting to expunge all memory of their renditions of "Uptown Girl" at "the karaoke last night".
⁽⁴⁾ As anyone who has ever played a licensed computer game tied-in to the release of the latest superhero blockbuster can affirm.

North East England c 7,500 BC - AD 2007

Purveyors of fake tan and mini-skirts, underperforming football clubs and philanthropic property developers desirous of a favourable outcome at the planning committee are today fleeing southward, following the tragic death of the North-East of England, which has slipped into the fog-covered Tyne mere days after giving birth to a spectacular series of cock-ups ranging from the loss of 25 million child benefit recipients' financial data through the spectacular collapse of Northern Rock and all the way up to a series of "unlawful"⁽¹⁾ donations to the Labour Party (not to mention recent performances by Newcastle United FC, Middlesborough FC and Sunderland AFC).

The North East was first discovered by humanity in or around 7,500BC, when wandering tribes - smitten by the region's beauty and frozen in place by its biting weather - decided to settle near the Tyne and Tees. Little is known of what they did over the next few thousand years but when the Romans arrived in the region in about 46AD they described a people covered in strange dyes and little else, travelling round in small warbands ... a tradition still upheld in Newcastle town centre every night around pub kicking out time.

Over the millennium that followed, North East England would be a place of conflict, seeing scores of battles between Roman and Celt, Celt and Pict, Angle and Briton and Viking and Anglo-Saxon. To this day experts continue to question the causes of so many battles, though the heavy betting remains on the bloke in the silly helmet from the stag party knocking over the mead-flavoured Bacardi breezer of "the fit bird with the big jugs" from the hen night who'd been dancing with the squaddie back on leave and everything kicking off from there. Things carried on in much the same way following the arrival of the Normans, with North East England spending the ensuing centuries being fought over by Scots and English rulers, most of these conflicts ending in the ceremonial handing over of Berwick-on-Tweed to the winner.

Despite all this fighting, North East England was also a thriving cultural centre, with a strong monastic tradition. The monks were initially based at Lindisfarne, though they were to flee inland from the island in the late 9th Century due to fear of Viking attack (apparently one of the monks had made the mistake of "looking at Ivar the Boneless's bird"). Over the years North East England gave the world The Lindisfarne Gospels, the poetry of Caedmon, the Venerable Bede's History of the English People and Paul Gascoigne's rendition of Fog on the Tyne.

With the Industrial Revolution, North East England's vast coal resources were to fuel Britain's foundries and help the birth of new technologies (so much so, indeed, that the phrase "taking coals to Newcastle" came to mean much the same as today's "bringing idiots to The Weakest Link"). The North East also gave birth to George Stephenson's legendary Rocket, the early steam locomotive that - at a top speed of 29 miles per hour - could outpace many a modern GNER intercity train.

In the 20th Century the North East, one of the world's greatest centres of industry, became home to a powerful labour movement. As Britain's power began to wane and its industry was ravaged by the Great Depression, hundreds of Geordies set out from Jarrow to walk to London to lobby Parliament ... though when they got there it turned out that Parliament was otherwise engaged and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was "washing his hair".

In the 1960s and 70s the region went from fame to infamy following tales of council corruption and dodgy building deals funded by bungs from architect John Poulson. By the 21st Century, however, as our lawyers have asked us to make clear, the North East of England was, happily, no longer associated with allegations of corruption or improper payments. Instead it was to become irrevocably connected with the cock-up, giving birth to a series of managerial errors that would astonish even The Office's David Brent. Whether it be the kind of management that encourages civil servants to pop discs containing secret data in the post, with the password handily written on the discs themselves, that allows banks such as Northern Rock to rack up debt faster than a failing NHS Trust even in the face of a global credit crunch, or that happily channels political donations through third parties even after the "loans for peerages" scandal - all were to be found in the North East. With the stumblebum nature of the region confirmed by the performances of its leading football teams and its reputation now centred on the inability of Newcastle's inhabitants to understand that freezing weather entails wearing more than a boob tube, the North East of England became too ashamed to hold its face up in public any longer and sloped off into the North Sea after weighting its boots with the last of the region's coal.

The North East of England will be commemorated at St Jimmy Nail's Church of the Crumpled Viz. The congregation will sing Dance Ti Thee Daddy from When the Boat Comes In and the theme from Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? before getting into a punch up after someone accidentally knocks over the communion wine.

⁽¹⁾ "unlawful" is a technical political term - it means exactly the same as "illegal" but somehow sounds better.

The New Labour Brown, June 2007-November 2007

Many psephologists, politicians and policy wonks are today declaring that Gordon Brown's government - once hailed (chiefly by Polly Toynbee, Jackie Ashley and, weirdly, the leader writers of the Daily Mail) as the bright, new hope of British politics - has died.

News of the death came this weekend when pollsters, kitted out in brown plastic macs, marched into the media bearing the remains of the lifeless creature in a gilded cage, bellowing that they wished to register a complaint about the government that they had not been allowed to vote for, "not five months ago".

Those concerned about the leadership of the country will be happy to learn that these claims were met by Lord Chancellor and Justice Minister Jack Straw, who repeatedly stated that the government, or New Labour Brown, was not dead but "merely resting" and noting its beautiful plumage. In an effort to persuade the pollsters and, indeed, the public not to return the New Labour Brown, Mr Straw then went on to insist that any signs of political death it may have shown - the first run on a bank in over a century, the loss of 25 million people's data, the employment of illegal immigrants in security jobs, a 700,000 slip in employment statistics, and the development of severe cataracts in Gordon Brown's political vision, not to mention the fact that The Brown's political birth was marked by the arrival of at least three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse - the Brown was simply pining for the votes. Mr Straw then went on to demonstrate the beast's lively state ... by repeatedly hitting its cage to get it to move.

Mr Straw went on to point out that The Brown has not yet fully emulated its predecessor - the Major Blue - whose signs of death included losing £27 billion on propping up the pound (rather than a bank) and assorted allegations of money being delivered to MPs in brown envelopes (rather than money being delivered to the party in false names).

Despite Mr Straw's protestations, pollsters continue to insist that the New Labour Brown only continues to stand up because it is nailed to its perch and that it is, in truth, dead, deceased, an ex-government and has kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to join the choir invisible.

The New Labour Brown will be buried at St Monty's Church of the Apposite Metaphor. It will be mourned by all those who took assurances of spin-free and competent government at face value. It is survived by a lame duck.

Gordon Brown's Political Vision mid-1950s - 2007

The death of Gordon Brown's Political Vision has come as a grave shock to all those who knew it and as a particular cause of grief to those members of the Labour Party who once held it up as a beacon of hope in a world of political ennui.

It would be impossible to recount the stirring tales that have been told of the Political Vision, many of them by the Prime Minister himself. It was a vast and noble thing, encompassing everything from the fate of the planet, nay the universe itself, all the way down to the tears of a single child born in poverty and even taking in the complex machinery of post neo-classical endogenous growth theory on the way. Thanks to its prodigious strength and mighty intellectual force, those who walked beside it - or perhaps it were better to say, "those who walked in its shadow" - could do so without fear that any harm might come to them.

The Political Vision was born on the knee of Mr Brown's own father, the Church of Scotland minister Dr John Brown, who lectured his son even as he dandled him in his hands, reminding the wee Gordon of his duty to his fellow man, to remember that many a muckle makes a mickle and - as the Prime Minister himself recalled - "to treat everyone equally" (whether Dr Brown added that "everyone" did not include either young Muslims suspected of terrorism or the super-rich is sadly unknown).

Throughout his time at university, and on into his early life in politics, Gordon was to cleave to his Political Vision. He was often seen parading it in public, whether as editor of The Red Paper on Scotland or as a rising young star of the Labour Shadow Cabinet of the 1980s and early 1990s. Gordon Brown's Political Vision took in all it surveyed: it was for fairness to all, hard work and duty, it stood for the poor against the rich and the downtrodden against the privileged.

It was in 1994 that the Political Vision was to suffer the tragic accident that would affect it for the rest of its life, running into the sharp end of Tony Blair's butter knife in the dim lighting of a fashionable North London restaurant. This accident, it would appear, left the Political Vision so hideously scarred that it fled the political stage, leaving it to the rival - we are assured inferior - vision of the young Tony Blair.

For years, Gordon Brown's Political Vision haunted the Labour Party - only bursting from the shadows at Budget time or during the party conference season, when its shocking appearance served both to remind the Labour party of the glories it had once been promised and to send a shiver down the spine of Mr Blair. Indeed, it was only with Mr Blair's own political death - tragically crushed under a large political machine that had somehow worked itself loose - that Mr Brown, and his Political Vision - emerged once more.

The years of isolation had clearly taken their toll. The Political Vision - so long masked from view - turned out to be a pale and paltry thing, little different from the vision of Mr Blair or - indeed - Tory leader David Cameron. As it stepped fully into the light with its first Queen's Speech, Gordon Brown's Political Vision crumbled into a ragbag of bills to detain people without trial, build on green belt and a bit of fiddling round the edges with school leaving ages, waste disposal charges and parental leave, all wholly ununited by any overarching theme.

Gordon Brown's Political Vision will be scattered by a light breeze. Mourners are asked to send donations to offshore tax havens.

Government Statistics c. Time Immemorial - 2007

Government Statistics have perished with the news that the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, underestimated the number of migrants working in the UK by 700,000, and failed to factor in the 40 odd members of the infamous Windsor family who have been milking the benefits system for decades.

Since the dawn of time governments have struggled to issue a factual reckoning of everything from the annual figures for the wheat harvest, literacy rate or life expectancy while those governments' subjects have struggled to believe that the figures haven't been spun, seasonally adjusted, calculated in base 72 or just downright fiddled.

When the Trojans woke up one morning to find the Achaeans gone, they proudly announced to the surviving citizens that all that was left behind was one horse, before being forced to rapidly revise this figure by Odysseus and his 30 armed companions leaping from the belly of the horse to remonstrate with the official Trojan statistician. The Ancient Britons massively underestimated the number of migrating Romans arriving via the south coast to take up work in the indoor plumbing and underfloor heating sector that so many Ancient Britons considered beneath them. And, similarly when Harold got his court tellers to tot up the numbers of Normans popping over for a weekend break to buy up and restore disused farmhouses and cottages in England, their calculations were so far out of whack that Harold had no choice but to hand over the keys to William the Conqueror.

Throughout history a sceptical public became used to governments announcing a number they'd first thought of, and then adding ten million to that figure. So when Home Secretary Jacqui Smith first stated confidently that the number of migrant workers in the UK was definitely 800,000, it was no surprise that she was later forced to sheepishly admit that the batteries in her abacus weren't fully charged and the real figure was, actually, 1,100,000... before the Office of National Statistics reminded her that the figure was, in fact, 1,500,000. Having displayed all the statistical acumen of the Metropolitan Police counting the number of protestors at a student demo, Ms Smith's series of seven⁽¹⁾ gaffes exposed Government Statistics as a tissue of lies, damned lies and... er... Government Statistics. As a shocked nation - outraged to discover that it had been misled yet again - called for Ms Smith to be replaced as Home Secretary by a Lithuanian accountant, Government Statistics failed to add up for the final time and were no more.

Government Statistics will be buried at the Church of St Johnny of Ball, the service will be conducted by the Reverend Dave "Let's Just Call It A Hundred for Cash" Dodgy and the congregation will sing hymn 432... sorry, hymn 700,432.

Government Statistics are predeceased by the Tooth Fairy's calculations and survived by Let's Just Split The Bill Four Ways.

⁽¹⁾ sorry, nine, sorry, two, sorry ... 278 following seasonal adjustment.

The Prospect of an Early General Election 27 June 2007 - 7 October 2007

Friends of Gordon Brown were today weeping into their glasses of puritanical water and Conservatives laughing into their jubilant champagne following news of the death of The Prospect of an Early General Election, which slipped under the psephological waters over the weekend with the Prime Minister's confirmation that he will not be seeking a mandate⁽¹⁾ from the electorate until 2009 at the earliest.

Despite having been born so recently and having spent so much of its time in the eye of the media, the parentage of The Prospect remains uncertain to this day. Those close to the Prime Minister insist that it was the child of a series of drunken liaisons between political journalists eager for a story and a few overenthusiastic Labour MPs intoxicated by Mr Brown's enormous success in looking dour but responsible while plague, pestilence, famine and death chose the first hundred days of his premiership to visit the country. The dark mutterings of others⁽²⁾, however, would suggest that The Prospect was actually the child of Mr Brown himself, born on the wrong side of the bedsheets after Mr Brown's attempts to screw the Conservative party and get his own supporters to toe the line by making a General Election seem - like an object in the wing mirror - to be much closer than it really was.

Whatever the truth of its origins, The Prospect certainly grew quickly. With political correspondents tired of their stories only appearing as the third item on the news bulletins, below shark sightings off the British coast or the latest prurient and unfounded speculation about a child abduction, it was soon being touted around as the great hope of political journalism. Before long it was impossible to turn on a news programme without having to face a twenty minute dissection of The Prospect's prospects. Soon discussion of The Prospect was drowning out all other news (save in The Express which continued to deal at length with the most important news of the day, though the day in question was usually 31 August 1997).

Though once closely associated with Mr Brown, The Prospect now seemed to be electrifying everyone. At the LibDem party conference Sir Menzies Campbell became so excited he was seen by at least one witness to twitch his left eye briefly before slipping back into his habitual coma. At the Conservative conference, young Dave "David" Cameron was moved to bounce around on stage calling for Mr Brown to "bring it on" - causing alarm to local hoteliers and restaurateurs who remembered that, in his Bullingdon Club days, such a phrase was normally the preface to thousands of pounds worth of damage being done to a local hostelry or eating establishment.

Mr Brown, meanwhile, found himself increasingly enamoured of The Prospect. Impressed by the attention granted to it by the media and assured of his own performance after an injection of good polling returns, he sought to woo the Prospect - bringing forward announcements he had promised would be made to Parliament, demanding that TV stations prepare for a major statement to be made and (in no way cynically) attempting to upstage Mr Cameron by (in no way cynically) rushing off to Iraq to double count (in no way cynically) the troop reductions he was planning there. The Prime Minister's amour fou for what many believed to be his own child was now obvious to all.

Such a liaison - straight out of the worst 19th Century melodrama as it was - was, of course, doomed. No sooner had the Prime Minister's enormous desire for an early election become clear than The Prospect itself was set upon by Shadow Chancellor George Osborne with a loaded Inheritance Tax cut. Severely wounded by the Tories' plan to enable feckless children to inherit up to a million pounds tax-free from their hard-working parents, The Prospect became a mere shade of its former self. Where once it had been attractive to all, now it was an embarrassing, shambling figure, capable only of inspiring pity. Thus it was that, horrified by what had happened to his former love, Mr Brown chose to steal out of Downing Street at the weekend and drown The Prospect under a sea of unfavourable opinion polls.

The Prospect of an Early General Election will be buried at the Church of St Bob Mckenzie of the Broken Swingometer. Conservatives, LibDems and Labour MPs in southern marginal seats will celebrate loudly into the night, while Mr Brown himself will stand silently at the graveside, a much-diminished man.

⁽¹⁾ younger readers are advised that "mandate" here means the commission as to policy granted by electors to their elected representatives and is in no way a suggestion that the Prime Minister was looking for a romantic liaison with a member of the male gender.
⁽²⁾ not to mention "the facts".

Political Speechwriters ????-2007

The death of Political Speechwriters is today being reported in blogs, in newspapers and on the television - but not in any political speeches - following the barnstorming, "unscripted" performance by Conservative leader David Cameron at the end of his party conference.

There have long been disagreements between the experts over the dating of the birth of the first Political Speechwriter. Some have suggested that speechwriting goes back to the very dawn of humanity itself, with Ug the Chieftain's brilliant "Ug smash!" oration⁽¹⁾ actually being written by Ug the Speechwriter - though the fact that Ug the Speechwriter could not, in fact, write anything at all and usually contented himself with trying to rub two rocks together in a futile attempt to create fire admittedly militates against this theory.

Others claim the Political Speechwriter was born during the Roman Republic, suggesting that Julius Caesar could not have "come, seen and conquered" without considerable help from his favourite Greek slave - though whether this theory refers to Caesar's famous "Veni, vedi, vici" report to the Senate following his battle with Pharnaces at Zela or merely to the Roman leader's activities at a particularly eventful orgy is still disputed.

There have, of course, been suggestions that the first Political Speechwriter was born during the time of the Tudors. Many believe that Queen Elizabeth I's announcement that she had "the body of a weak and feeble woman⁽²⁾; but ... the heart of a king, and of a king of England too" was in truth ghost-written by William Shakespeare ... though given that many believe that Shakespeare himself was ghosted by Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, Edward de Vere and/or Dr Who mean this theory advances debate very little.

What is certainly true is that even by the middle of the 20th century, many politicians still felt it incumbent on them to write their own speeches. Any doubts as to Churchill having dictated his most famous speeches to his secretary were recently allayed by the discovery of the first draft of his first speech to the Commons as Prime Minister, which reads "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and ... oh bloody Hell! I've knocked over the Johnnie Walker".

By the Presidency of John F Kennedy however, the Political Speechwriter had come to the fore. Without the work of his Special Counsel and Adviser, Ted Sorenson, the President would never have asked the Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you ⁽³⁾, ask what you can do for your country⁽⁴⁾" or informed the people of Berlin that he was a doughnut⁽⁵⁾.

Soon Political Speechwriters were informing us that Margaret Thatcher was "not for turning", Ronald Reagan wanted us to "win one for the Gipper" and John Major wanted to "get back to basics" (such as losing elections). At the same time the dangers of not employing a Speechwriter were also being made clear, not least in the notorious speech by former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, which reached its second day before it closed its first sentence⁽⁷⁾. So it was that the Speechwriter came to dominate the political scene. Brilliant words and phrases were focus-grouped and honed before being permitted to issue forth from the lips of great communicators such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Verbs were abandoned, "people's Princesses" were born. All seemed to augur well for the Speechwriters.

And yet, and yet. Some time in the noughties, people across the globe began to tire of the slick and well-honed phrase and began to question the sincerity of those who delivered them. Matters came to a head in Britain in September 2007, when - during his scripted speech to his party conference - Prime Minister Gordon Brown seemed to have been taken over by dark forces, calling for "British jobs for British workers" and the instant deportiation of "newcomers" who "sell drugs to our children or use guns" ... though, fortunately, he managed to stop himself before mentioning that, "like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'".

Political Speechwriters might perhaps have limped on even after this debacle, had it not been for the arrival of that knight in shining armour, David Cameron, who sought at one stroke to do away with political spin and deception by delivering his speech to the 2007 Conservative Conference unscripted and aided only by a few notes and an arcane process known only as "learning by heart" - a process which enables any politician to bestride the political stage like a colossus, exhibiting unspun sincerity and deep engagement with the issues of concern to the British people even as they dole out the same bland platitudes, feel-good-phrases and dog-whistle buzzwords that they have studiously workshopped with their presentation teams for the past three weeks.

With the country enraptured by Mr Cameron's performance and the new "learning by heart" process becoming all the rage, there was no more room for Political Speechwriters. They passed away, unloved and unmourned, with not even a single memorable phrase to mark their departure.

Political Speechwriters will be buried at the Church of St Soapbox on the Speakers' Corner. The funeral oration will be entirely spontaneous and unrehearsed, which is to say ill-thought-through and rambling and the congregation will sing Hymn 117 A Little Bit of Politics (Music: Andrew Lloyd-Webber; Lyrics: Ben Elton).

Political Speechwriters are survived by a bounce for the Conservatives in the polls and a worried Gordon Brown.

⁽¹⁾ Later shamelessly plagiarised by The Incredible Hulk during a stump speech to a large number of tanks he was, er, smashing.
⁽²⁾ believed to be Mary, Queen of Scots
⁽³⁾ definitely not provide affordable medical care, for one thing.
⁽⁴⁾ if you are poor, this will conventionally involve dying in a foreign country of which you know little.
⁽⁵⁾ Ich bin ein Berliner^(6)
(6) There is, of course, no truth in the myth that the phrase translated in context into "I am a doughnut" but, dammit, it's funny.
⁽⁷⁾ Though cf. John Prescott, for whom Speechwriters did their best best but were sadly thwarted by Mr Prescott's insistence on trying to read out a minimum of three separate lines of his prepared text at the same time.

British Party Politics c.1765-2007

It is with deep regret that we at As A Dodo must today report the death of Party Politics in Great Britain, following news that the policies of the major parties have now become so interchangeable - if not indistinguishable - that there seems to be little or no point in trying to tell them apart. Given Party Politics' long and not always ignoble history, the news that political parties have ceased to be a source of ideological belief and Hegelian dialectic and instead become mere vehicles for the election of their leaders to the Premiership will have come as a shock to many (particularly Sir Menzies Campbell) and a source of delight to Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

Given the long decline and sad end of Party Politics, few can today picture them as they were in their youth: two boisterous (not to say belligerent) lads, "Whig" and "Tory", both the children of turbulent times, both engaged in endless battles over the royal succession and the power of the monarchy. By all accounts they were bold youths, never happier than knocking back a few swift ones in the pub before a gentle evening of trying to beat seven shades out of each other as they vied for the favour of a various royals, in scenes which (fortunately) would not be seen again until the tragic and disturbing events of "It's A Royal Knockout" in 1987.

As they moved from their teens into their twenties and beyond, however, Party Politics began to settle down. With independence in the offing in the Americas and revolution nascent in France, Whig and Tory had begun to feel that fighting in the streets was best left to others - preferably German mercenaries trying to keep down revolt on the streets of America and effete members of the British Aristocracy going under the dread-inspiring pseudonym of "The Scarlet Pimpernel" brawling with the sans-culottes on the streets of France. Tired of their youthful ways, Party Politics began to grow respectable - debates in the Houses of Parliament began to involve fewer punch-ups, brawls became confined to only the worser class of election hustings and monarchs became too interested in talking to trees to interfere. By the mid 1800s, Tory had begun to let it be known that he'd much rather be known as "Conservative", Whig started referring to himself "Liberal"⁽¹⁾ and both found themselves able to stand at the same bar in the House of Commons without either attempting to physically wound the other.

Over the following decades Conservative and Tory went about the business of Party Politics with a vengeance - arguing over free trade and protectionism, repealing Corn Laws, spinning off and then absorbing an assortment of splinter parties and ensuring that the House of Commons had some of the cheapest bars in all of the UK.

In the early 20th Century, Party Politics were given a further boost by the arrival of Liberal and Conservative's horny-handed and cloth-capped brother, Labour. This feisty new addition to the political scene, complete with his socialist ideology and Methodist convictions had soon injected new life into the old two-party system ... even if much of this new life was added at the expense of Liberal, who found himself swiftly transformed from a significant figure on the political stage to third understudy in the local am dram players.

By the middle of the century, Party Politics had become a gripping clash between the ideologies of Socialism and Conservatism, capable of sweeping up millions as National Health Services were created, industries nationalised, nuclear weapons purchased, wars fought, unions confronted and much more cheap beer served in the many House of Commons bars.

With the arrival of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative leader and the rise of the Labour left wing in the 1970s, Party Politics arrived at its most glorious hour. There was now no issue which was not a point of principal, no argument which was not vital and no drink which was not a necessary stiffener before a debate.

Few knew it at the time but Party Politics' finest hour was also the beginning of Party Politics' decline. After 18 years of Conservative rule, Labour had begun to rue its old ways. Where once "conviction" had been its watch word, now it began to prefer "pragmatism" and "triangulation": free markets, nuclear weapons and low taxes ceased to be a source of division between the parties and instead became sources of agreement. By 1997, the British public knew they could vote for either Labour or Conservative without fear of sweeping change.

So it was that Party Politics drifted first into consensus and then, with Conservative eager to ape Labour's success by shadowing its policies, into confusion. By 2007 the most fiscally conservative party was the old socialist party, the most ecological party was the centre party and the most socially liberal party was the former right wing party. Thus it was that party difference ceased to mean anything beyond the difference between the party leaders and so Party Politics - despite Ming Campbell's literally breathtaking rendition of "Say It Loud, I'm Old and I'm Proud!" at Brighton this week - sleepwalked off a cliff at a seaside political conference.

Party Politics will be buried all at sea at Brighton, Bournemouth and Blackpool over the Party Conference Season. Mourners have been asked to send large donations and a request for a seat in the House of Lords to the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat election funds.

⁽¹⁾ Our American readers are here asked to note that this was in a time when the word "liberal" meant to believe in liberty, rather than being the vilely offensive curse word, indicative of a total lack of moral fibre and a willingness, nay eagerness, to be violently taken from behind by communists, terrorists and other evildoers, that it is today.

Gordon Brown's Honeymoon Period 2007-2007

Gordon Brown’s Honeymoon Period – that glorious summer of sunny smiles and political harmony marked by a nation’s delirious acceptance of their new unelected Prime Minister⁽¹⁾ – has passed away.

It was in the balmy days of June 2007 that Gordon Brown and the British people were united in political matrimony, Gordon having offered a shoulder for the nation to cry on as it tried to recover from the discovery that former husband Tony Blair had been having a long and passionate affair with George W Bush ... as well as having offered the use of a double-barrelled shotgun with which to do away with its errant spouse (thus fulfilling Mr Blair's confident prediction to his friends that Gordon would only ever get together with the British people over his dead body).

So it was that on the joyous day of the nuptials, men, women and children across the country gathered together to celebrate the union between themselves and Gordon Brown in an outpouring of emotion on a level not seen since a secret cabal of florists⁽²⁾ took out a contract on Diana, Princess of Wales to boost its profit margins.

At first all seemed well with the relationship. Mr Brown proved a dutiful - if unexciting - spouse, never happier than when plodding off to work to deal with inundation, foot and mouth, terrorist attacks or any other of the signs of impending apocalypse which had decided to pop by to wish him and the nation all the best in their new marriage. Yet beneath the surface all was not as it seemed. As the months went by the nation began to tire of Mr Brown's ceaseless dedication to his work, not to mention his constant calls for bans on gambling, reductions in drinking hours, the reclassification of cannabis and his secret meetings with spiritualists in order to channel the thoughts of The Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips. Soon the nation found itself looking elsewhere for a bit of fun and it began to think again of beginning an affair of its own with that well-scrubbed if rather vacant David Cameron chap who had popped round the other week to offer to install some solar panels on the roof.

Sensing a growing distance between himself and his spouse the Prime Minister decided to endear himself to the populace once more. Sadly he chose to do so by paying tribute to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher and slipping £120 to new mums to "buy something nice for the kiddies". It was not enough to close up the rift that had developed between Mr Brown and the nation that had once been willing to lie down and think of "Britishness" for him.

So as the nation sullenly ignored him over the toast at the breakfast table, Gordon Brown’s Honeymoon Period was over… I MEAN OVER! and a door slammed on the greatest political love-story since Alastair Campbell last caught sight of Tony in his Y-fronts.

Gordon Brown’s Honeymoon Period will be buried at the Trades Union Congress. The service will be conducted by the broadsheets, the tabloids and Newsnight (in an item dominated by quirky graphics, unsuitable music and a few images of Alan Yentob nodding intercut at random). It is survived by Gordon Brown’s Awkward Silences, Gordon Brown’s Moodiness and Gordon Brown’s Decision To Return Home To Live With His Mother For A Wee While.

⁽¹⁾ due mostly to their relief at being delivered – how ever undemocratically – from the yoke of Tony Blair.
⁽²⁾ led, we are advised by our Egyptian correspondent, by the Duke of Edinburgh.

John Prescott’s Parliamentary Career 1970-2007

John Prescott’s Parliamentary Career – thought to have died last year under the enormous weight of personal scandal and political controversy – has been ended by the hand of John Prescott himself following his announcement that he is to step down as a Member for Parliament at the next general election in October, whenever that might be.

Though often considered an object of derision and frequently mocked for his lifelong struggle with the English language, it is little known that as well as being MP for Hull East, Prescott was also Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Deputy Prime Minister, filling in for Tony Blair at the Despatch Box during Prime Minister's Questions, where his idiosyncratic performances were warmly greeted by the entire house and led to offers of a summer season at Bridlington, a show at the Edinburgh Fringe and many cries of "taxi for the Deputy Prime Minister"⁽¹⁾.

The Career itself was descended from a long line of working-class struggle: Mr Prescott's father was a railway signalman and his grandfather a miner and he himself served the cause - and assorted members of the upper classes - as a waiter on cruise ships. Politicised by his forebears and galvanised by his thrashing of Anthony Eden at quoits during a winter voyage to Egypt in 1956, young Prescott became a union activist – graduating from Ruskin College, Oxford with a diploma in economics and politics and a determination to enter Parliament. In 1970, he was elected to serve the constituency of Hull East - but failing to find a tray big enough to carry 150,000 pints of bitter, he ran away to Westminster.

A staunch defender of Labour’s proud socialist heritage, Prescott served his time as a left-wing backbencher before his election as Deputy Leader in 1994. Seen by many as Tony Blair’s attempt to keep in touch with Old Labour (something Tony was loath to do except during his periodic attempts to heal Old Labour of scrofula), Prescott proved his worth by spending many long years mediating between the warring Blair and Brown – keeping the peace by standing between them and reminding them of the need for unity, in lectures they would always remember but sadly - due to Mr Prescott's acknowledged difficulty in getting his sentences to begin and end in the correct order - never understand.

A series of scandals and controversies in the last few years of The Career's life caused many to question its claim to be in touch with the grassroots of the party – especially as that party was frequently in a garden and the grassroots were usually on his flannel trousers following a spectacularly mis-cued croquet shot. Despite this the doubters had cause to think again in 2001, when Mr Prescott made a real effort to get in touch with the working people of Britain - by punching a farmer who had thrown an egg at him. Aides later explained that Mr Prescott had resorted to violence not because his assailant had criticised his politics but because he’d forgotten to throw the bacon, sausages, black pudding, fried slice and beans as well.

In 2003 The Career reasserted its socialist principles by encouraging Mr Prescott to give up the flat he rented from the RMT union at a fifth of the market value in Clapham (that hotbed of socialist struggle) and instead to conduct his ascetic lifestyle in just his Admiralty Arch grace-and-favour flat, his official residence, Dorneywood, and his home in Hull⁽²⁾.

Yet on occasion, The Career's radicalism could go too far. In 2006 it fell into disgrace when it was revealed that it had taken a stand against the hegemony of monogamy after it emerged that Mr Prescott had been conducting a two-year affair with his diary secretary.

Despite such controversies it was with a heavy collective (but not in the left-wing sense) heart that New Labour heard the news in June this year that Mr Prescott had resigned as Deputy Leader of the Party. As a mark of respect his position as Deputy Prime Minister was abolished. But retirement did not suit the career. Unable to face a slow decline on the backbenches, it decided to end it all by doing away with itself in front of a group of reporters at one of Mr Prescott's few remaining homes.

John Prescott’s Parliamentary Career will be buried at the St Professor Stanley Unwin Churchmolehode, deep joy. The congregation will sing hymn No. 473 “What A Friend We Have In Tony… No Really, He’s Me Mate He Is”.

⁽¹⁾ an offer which the quondam Environment Secretary was always able to turn down thanks to his many ministerial and non-ministerial gas-guzzlers vehicles.
⁽²⁾ a generously proportioned £650,000 home and not, as some have cruelly suggested, a caravan he shared with Margaret Beckett.

The Labour Deputy Leadership Contest 10th May-24th June 2007

The Labour Deputy Leadership Contest has expired in a veritable volcano of excitement and Hollywood-style pizzazz with the news that Harriet Harman (you know ... that one ... who did ... that thing ... or maybe I've mixed her up with someone else) has been chosen to succeed John Prescott as Deputy Leader of the party, a role - alongside the Deputy Prime Ministership - in which Mr Prescott made such an unforgettable contribution to British life, or at least to the lives of tabloid editors in need of a front page filler.

Though it felt to many political journalists and most of the long-suffering electorate that The Contest began several years past, in fact the campaign to find a new Deputy Leader commenced only a little over six weeks ago as, following Tony Blair's announcement made at the point of Gordon Brown's gun of his departure from office, Mr Blair's court jester loyal deputy, John Prescott announced his own decision to end his long fight against the English language and egg-throwing farmers poverty and injustice and park his two Jags stand down.

In the absence of a democratic election to find a successor to the Prime Minister, The Labour Deputy Leadership Contest became the most talked-about media event since Big Brother – although sadly the nation was not given the option to express its preference by text or evict any of the candidates.

The six candidates, Doc, Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful and Dopey Hilary Benn, Hazel Blears, John Cruddas, Peter Hain, Harriet Harman and Alan Johnson, took their positions at the starting line for this political Wacky Race, and were off…! For the next six weeks the six candidates jockeyed for position as they fought for the votes in the great political arenas of our nation – MySpace, Facebook and The Daily Mail. By the time on Sunday afternoon the candidates entered the final stretch at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall the entire nation was on the edge of its seat – desperately waiting for the EastEnders omnibus to start.

The three-way electoral college with preferential voting – allowing Labour MPs, party members and trade unions to express their preference in a nail-biting finish of sufficient mathematical complexity to require the services of the whole of the Massachussets Institute of Technology and Carol Vorderman – saw candidates drop out of The Contest quicker than British tennis players at Wimbledon. The first to depart was Hazel Blears, who was excluded from the second round after both failing to meet the minimum height restriction and it being discovered that she was in fact being remotely controlled by a Mr T Blair of Downing Street. She was swiftly followed by Peter Hain, whose orange skin and tragic attempts to dance to the left, then right and back again had led many Labour members to assume he had mistaken the Deputy Leadership contest for an even-less-edifying-than-usual episode of Britain's Got Talent. Next to fall was Hilary Benn, who failed to pass muster when the electorate realised that yes they did rather like him, but not that much, leaving Mr Benn to return to his home in Festive Road and look froward to new adventures in the Fancy Dress Shop with the mysterious shopkeeper. Soon to follow was John Cruddas, who had made the grave - some might say unforgivable - error of standing for the Deputy Leadership as a Socialist.

Only Alan Johnson and Harriet Harman, were left. With a last-minute surge of re-allocated preferential votes and the vague memory of her having said something about the war in Iraq being poorly managed, Harman surged past the former postie (who had stopped to join some old workmates in a game of keepy-uppy with a parcel marked "FRAGILE") to an overwhelming less-than-1% victory. The country went wild – celebrating long into the night a British victory at last – and Labour’s Deputy Leadership Contest was no more.

The Labour Deputy Leadership Contest was buried at St Indifferent’s Church of the Couldn't Care Less. A moving eulogy was delivered by Harriet Harman who described Mr Prescott as a "very difficult act to follow", perhaps chiefly due to the fact she wouldn't be shagging her secretary, didn’t punch people very often and could string together three words without the first two trying to overtake the last one on the final bend.

The Grammar School 1944-2007

Hundreds of middle class parents are today tearing up their 11-plus practice papers and bitterly lamenting the thousands they forked out for extra tuition in a desperate attempt to get their Nintendo DS-addicted Julian and Poppy through the 11-plus examination, following the announcement by Conservative Education spokesman David Willetts that the Grammar School has failed its final test and been condemned to the great Secondary Modern in the sky.

Though it could trace its origins back to Anglo-Saxon colleges of Latin grammar - where young Aelwulf, Leofric and Bede could learn exactly how to say that the slave of Caecilius was serving dormice at the orgy of the Emperor - the modern Grammar School was only born in 1944, following the passing of the Butler Education Act, which offered the children of domestic servants the chance not to follow in their fathers' footsteps.

In its early years the Grammar School was a popular child, with many friends on both the left and right of the political spectrum. Alongside its brothers, the Technical College and the Secondary Modern School, it promised to sweep away class divisions, granting a proper education to all and offering a real chance of advancement to any child. All this was to be achieved by the "11-plus" examination, under which each and every child at the age of 11 (that is, each and every child whose parents could not afford to opt out of the system and buy Nigel a nice place at Eton despite his inability to add two and two together without making "zebra") was categorised according to their ability to say 'what is to "hand" as "hat" is to "head"' and what time the 11.32 from St Pancras will be derailed by the 12.27 from Nottingham if both are travelling at 120mph. Soon children up and down Britain found themselves being divided up and allotted to their appropriate schools, with those who passed their 11-plus going on to Grammar Schools and those who didn't instead being offered a more vocational education at Secondary Moderns and Technical Colleges, which process left them completely untraumatised and in no way conscious of failure.

Despite this, the Grammar School had barely entered its teens when questions began to be raised about its fitness, as more and more people began to notice that larger and larger proportions of the pupils at Grammar School (by now usually referred to by their parents as "the clever ones") were middle-class while more and more of those at the other schools (by now usually referred to by the parents of the children at Grammar School as "the thickies") were working-class. Despite this, the Grammar School's fond parents in Westminster continued to dote upon it (and upon the votes of all those middle-class parents), even to the extent of lavishing money on it at its siblings expense. While the young Alan Bennetts of the Grammar School were enjoying after-school clubs where they discussed classical music recordings and enjoyed the attentions of fat, fond teachers with a liking for conducting lessons in French and quoting lines from "Now, Voyager", teenage children at London Secondary Moderns were sitting on chairs made for nine-year-olds and learning how to hit pieces of wood with a hammer.

Matters went from bad to worse as the 11-plus system itself came under fire, when it was found that the main test for whether a child on the borderline of passing should be sent to the Grammar or the Secondary Mod was to take him or her to the nearest WC and see if they referred to it as a lavatory or a toilet. With the frightening realisation that if the results of an IQ test really did reveal who would be the future rulers of the country then we could soon expect our sceptered isle to fall into the hands of the selection-of-biros-in-the-right-shirt-pocket geeks and weirdos from Mensa, the writing was on the wall for the Grammar School - in the form of a derogatory statement hastily scribbled by a pupil from a new rival, the Comprehensive School, which outrageously offered every child the same education irrespective of their background.

Nonetheless, the Grammar was to struggle on. While it soon found itself unwelcome in many parts across Britain, it still had many powerful friends. For decades it was able to rely on the support of thousands of parents eager to see Toby and Pippa do better than those children on the council estate they met at primary school while at the same time being reluctant to splash out thousands on public school fees. Even stauncher was the support the Grammar received from the Conservative Party. Yet all seemed doomed when, in 1997, the Labour Party swept to power and with it arrived an Education Secretary, David Blunkett, pledged to end all selection and break down class barriers - a goal he bizarrely attempted to achieve by mingling with the upper classes at parties held by The Spectator.

Even at this darkest hour, The Grammar School somehow found strength to struggle on, quietly whispering to senior members of the Labour Party how badly its death would play in the Daily Mail and how well the children of those very same party members might do if they got to go to a nice selective school rather than the local "bog-standard" Comprehensive.

Yet how often the best laid plans gang agley. The Grammar School had sown the seeds of its own destruction. Even as the Government reneged on its promises to end selection, so it created a new rival for The Grammar: the Academy. Young and fresh, the Academy was unhindered by the Grammar's historical baggage. It was backed by rich and powerful businessmen, eager to indoctrinate the young give something back to the community. It was able to select its pupils in more under-the-counter ways, seeking "aptitude" where the Grammar had clung to "IQ" and even interviewed pupils to check their suitability where the Grammar had been increasingly forced to stick to the arid results of an exam. It was little surprise when the Academy won even the heart of the Conservative Party and, increasingly unloved, ever-more-confused and unable even to find the hidden four-letter-word in the sentence "Roger paid over the asking price for his peerage", The Grammar School sang the school song (in Latin) no more.

The Grammar School will be buried at St Cameron's Church of the Apostasy. The Reverend David Willetts will preside. The hymn will be the number that completes the sequence 12,12,13,15,18.

The Grammar School is survived by the Academy, the Faith School, the Public School, the Trust School and, just barely, by the Comprehensive School.

Gordon Brown's Dourness 1994-2007

Gordon Brown’s Dourness, the permanent scowl which resided upon the Chancellor's face for so many years has died, passing away - by some strange cosmic coincidence - at exactly the same time as his best friend, Tony Blair, announced his decision to stand down as Labour leader.

Gordon Brown’s Dourness was born in 1994 when a perfectly good lunch with Tony Blair at Islington’s Granita restaurant left a nasty taste in his mouth. Before that dreadful moment when he nearly choked on his organic glass of water and small piece of stale bread julienne, Gordon had been the life and soul of every Labour Party meeting and late-into-the-night trade union function – entertaining party members and comrades alike with his hilarious impression of Tony Blair impersonating Margaret Thatcher. The meal at Granita at which Tony claimed first dibs on being Labour leader was to change everything – including the wind – which is why Gordon’s face stuck like that for the next 13 years.

Over the years Gordon Brown’s Dourness deepened, particularly when in the company of his best friend Tony Blair. In public it presented an unchanging granite mask to the world and called for “fiscal prudence”, whilst privately hammering on the dividing wall of Number Ten in the wee small hours and shouting drunkenly for Tony to “Give me back my party, you lying, back-stabbing git”.

It was when Tony Blair finally set the date for his departure from office that cracks began to appear in the stony visage that had for so long been a gift to Britain's leading impressionists (and Jon Culshaw). By the following day Gordon Brown himself was even overheard cracking a joke (“Knock, Knock, Tony … Who’s there…? The removal men … !”). Things went from bad to worse for The Dourness as it suffered the indignity of a new, trendy haircut and, during a walkabout, Gordon Brown was seen cheerily tousling the hair of a small boy – although this was later discovered to be Ruth Kelly, who had to go home immediately and whip herself clean.

Even a challenge to Gordon’s leadership bid from left-wing Labour MP, John McDonnell, failed to halt the rapid decline of The Dourness (indeed, the comical surprise of discovering that the Labour Party still harboured a left-wing MP left it even more weakened). As Gordon began to skip merrily from press conference to photo opportunity, humming “This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” and expounding his vision of a new Britain full of eco-towns, LSD on the NHS and tie-die uniforms for the British Army in Iraq, Gordon Brown’s Dourness fell into its last sulk and was no more.

Gordon Brown’s Dourness has already been buried in an unmarked grave. Close friends and family sang an up-tempo version of “Dear Prudence” – though best friend, Tony Blair, was unable to attend. It is survived by Gordon Brown’s Mirth, Gordon Brown’s Delight, Gordon Brown’s Ecstasy and David Cameron.

Burying Bad News c.100,000BC-2007AD

As A Dodo is sorry to relay the bad news that Burying Bad News itself has died following an unsuccessful attempt by the new Ministry of Justice to announce a massive increase in the cost of the ID card scheme on the day that the media and every man, woman, child, cat, dog and budgie (except Gordon Brown) were paying their last respects to the glorious Premiership of Tony Blair.

Burying Bad News was born over 100,000 years ago, when news of Ug the Hunter's decision (having been advised by Thrug the Lazy) to dig his mastodon trap only one-foot deep – thus endangering the whole tribe - was released just after the neighbourhood volcano erupted, in a piece of news management so successful that it buried not only the bad news about the ineffective and dangerous mastodon trap but also the entire village and everyone in it.

Burying Bad News quickly became a popular method for damage limitation. At first it was mainly used among small groups, such as the time the bad news about burning down the village (itself only recently reconstructed after that nasty incident with the mastodon trap and the volcano) was announced on the day of the discovery of fire. Soon, however, the practice came to the attention of politicians and personalities in the public eye. It was not long before anyone who was anyone was Burying Bad News: Jesus's disciples announcing the financial collapse of their Christmas Club scheme on the day of his crucifixion, King Harold revealing his long-concealed "large-piece-of-wood-in-the-eye allergy" on the day of William the Conqueror’s victorious Hastings away match, and Galileo confessing he had been using his newfangled telescope to spy on his neighbour’s comely wife on the same day the newspapers were full of his claims about the Earth revolving around the Sun.

By the 20th century Burying Bad News had truly came of age. News of Neville Chamberlain’s ingrown toe-nail, which had been kept from the British public for fear of a causing a loss of faith in the government and a run on the Stock Market, was finally announced to the press on September 3rd 1939 as Hitler’s tanks rolled into Poland (a story that was itself almost kept off the front pages by a crushing defeat of the England cricket team in a friendly match at the hands of the St Barnston’s C of E Primary School 2nd XI).

In the 1960s, news that Paul McCartney had died at the age of 28 (knocked down on a zebra crossing in Abbey Road) was deemed of lesser interest to a nation in the grip of Beatlemania than the terrible news that Ringo had written his first song. And in the 1970s all sorts of bad news about three-day weeks, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the decline of Britain as an international power were buried under dire warnings of the possibility of new singles by the Goombay Dance Band.

It was with the arrival of Tony Blair’s New Labour government in 1997 that the dark arts of his spin doctors exalted Burying Bad News to the position of a new religion – as everything from Peter Mandelson's manifold "resignations" to the Prime Minister's desire to destroy the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction by invading the Moon was kept from the British public by being announced on the day of either a major plot twist in EastEnders or news of a David Beckham haircut.

However, when a leaked email from Labour spin doctor Jo Moore suggesting that the attack on New York on 9/11 might be a “good day to bury bad news”, the age-old ruse began to weaken. The media became ever more cynical about news management and Burying Bad News found itself frequently blinking uncomfortably in the public spotlight.

And so it was that on a day of national gnashing and wailing, as Mr Blair announced his plans to stand down in six weeks time, the news of a further £840 million increase in the cost of taking a digital fingerprint of every man, woman, child, cat, dog and budgie in Britain (and charging them for it) was released to jaded and mistrusting journalists and broadcasters who, desperate for some real news to report, pounced on the story like a herd of angry mastodons. And so it was that Burying Bad News passed away.

Burying Bad News will be buried on the day of a much more important story – like Tony Blair rising on the third day or Paris Hilton’s release from prison. It is survived by bad news broadcasting, especially on BBC News 24 and Fox News.

Tony Blair's Premiership 1997-2007

The streets of Britain were today filled with weeping hordes as a great portion of humanity gathered to greet the passing of the Premiership of Tony Blair with tears of unalloyed joy.

To understand the Premiership, one must first understand its parents. Its father was a Labour Party desperate to return to power after the bruising humiliation of defeat in 1992 by John Major's Conservatives (a group who had the economic know-how of George IV, the political savoir-faire of Neville Chamberlain and the deep moral sense of Aleister Crowley). Like so many beings of a certain age, the Party decided that the best way to prove its continuing virility was to abandon its long-term partner, Socialism, and take up with younger lovers, in this case two bright young MPs - Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

Soon the Party was shucking off its cloth cap, sticking its whippet in a bag with a couple of bricks and locking itself away with Tony one night, Gordon the next, to make mad passionate love to the free market and globalisation. It was following one of these wild nights with the Party that Tony met Gordon in Islington's "Granita" restaurant to announce that he was expecting the party leadership. Luckily for all, Gordon took the news stoically, pausing only to stab his hand with a fork in frustration and extract a solemn pledge from Tony that he would one day hand over the leadership to him, before congratulating his rival for the Labour Party's love whilst keeping his fingers crossed behind his back.

And who was the Party's new paramour? Anthony Charles Lynton Blair had the assets to turn any ageing Party's head: he was young, he had a nice smile and he had an extraordinary ability to fully and honestly believe what he was saying at any given moment - an ability he showed from an early age, casting himself as a through-and-through Englishman despite having been born and educated in Scotland⁽¹⁾, not to mention watching Jackie Milburn play for Newcastle United from the, completely fictional at the time, seats behind the goal at St James, stowing away on the utterly non-existent Newcastle-Barbados plane service and - most impressively of all - standing four-square behind the 1983 Labour manifesto's call for nuclear disarmament and for the country to quit the EEC while privately informing his selection conference that he disagreed with both policies.

By the time of his maiden speech he was informing the Commons and the nation that he believed in socialism because it stood for "cooperation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality" - words which can happily stand in the Hall of Historically Ironic Speeches alongside Margaret Thatcher's quotation of St Francis's Prayer in 1979, "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope" not to mention General John Sedgwick's "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist...".

Utterly infatuated by the youthful Blair, the Party cast aside all that it once believed in, whether it be promises to raise income tax and restore trade union rights, pledges to pursue nuclear disarmament or even its long-held desire to "secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service" (a desire which was in any event so wordy that the Party usually managed to forget what it was going on about half way through reading it), all in the burning need to be seen as "New".

And so, having reduced his lover to a besotted devotee, ready to do anything its new leader wanted for the slightest chance of successfully getting up an election, and aided by a Conservative party which, under John Major, evinced all the togetherness and discipline of a member of the Yugoslav Federation, Tony Blair found himself ready to give birth to his Premiership.

The Premiership was born on 2nd May 1997. Like the Roman people, exhausted by the cruel and incompetent rule of Tiberius, gleefully saluting their new emperor Caligula, so the British people, exhausted by the cruelty of the Thatcherites and incompetence of the Majorites, gleefully saluted their new Prime Minister as, flanked by his loyal Praetorian guard of spin doctors, he swept into Number 10 Downing Street.

Young and bold, the Premiership moved with a reckless pace, acting swiftly on its greatest priorities - such as evicting Downing Street cat Humphrey from its long-time home for fear of aggravating Cherie's allergies. Sadly, the Premiership's greatest enemy - the very same Gordon Brown who had given it his blessing in Granita - was already acting with even greater swiftness, choosing to prove his own New Labour credentials by throwing away years of party tradition and centuries of governmental responsibility by privatising the Bank of England.

Though briefly distracted by the need to produce the appropriate strained expression and catch in the voice around the time of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the Premiership was soon to strike back at Chancellor Brown. While the brooding figure at Number 11 contented himself with taking benefits away from single mothers, the wholesale privatisation of both the nation's assets and almost all public-sector investment, and restricting pension increases to 75p, Mr Blair was embarking on a series of wide-ranging reforms, introducing devolution, removing peers from the House of Lords, passing the Freedom of Information Act and creating the post of Mayor of London. All were hailed as great successes. Unfortunately the Premiership itself was later to regret each and every one of them, even trying to nobble the mayoral vote by putting up a joke candidate, former Health Secretary and full-time Santa impersonator Frank Dobson. Happily, the Premiership had other strings to its bow. Unhappily one of them was the Millennium Dome, a folly on an (this being prior to the attempts to win the World Cup 2006 for England, the Olympic funding farce and, indeed, the Iraq war) unimaginable scale, which sought to commemorate the past thousand years by putting a big tent on some disused wasteland and filling it with exhibits so staggeringly tacky they could have been "lovingly handcrafted" for the Franklin Mint.

By the end of its first term, however, the Premiership was able to boast one unalloyed success⁽²⁾: the Northern Irish peace process. At last there was an achievement Mr Blair felt able to call completely his own, even despite the fact much of the spade work had actually been done by Mr Major.

Buoyed by this knowledge, the memory of the dark days under John Major and housing prices rising faster than a city trader's bonus, Tony Blair's Premiership was swept back to power in 2001.

With Mr Brown once more seeking to demonstrate his mastery of domestic politics, this time by giving oodles of cash to educational and health bodies whose idea of fiscal planning was to drop all their new money into a big hole in the ground in the hope it might grow into a money tree, Mr Blair knew he would have to look elsewhere to make an impression.

Having already discovered the enormous kudos that could be won by blowing places up following his intervention in the Yugoslav conflict, he was delighted to find that the new President of the United States of America was intent on destabilising as much of the globe as possible, by tearing up any treaties he could find and sending troops to anywhere Dick Cheney told him to Halliburton could find reconstruction work democracy needed spreading⁽³⁾. Soon Bush and Blair were bringing the benefits of all their skills to bear on Iraq, seeking to convince the world that it constituted an imminent threat to peoples across the globe - despite there being absolutely no credible evidence to back them up - and, when the world refused to agree with them, going ahead and blowing Iraq up anyway.

Not only did the Iraq war have the effect of giving Mr Blair the opportunity to pose with tanks and try to sound Churchillian, the hatred and suspicion it stirred up, combined with the activities of groups such as Al Qaeda, also gave him - along with a succession of Home Secretaries all of whom regarded Genghis Khan as a namby-pamby liberal - the opportunity to bring in more and more repressive legislation and restrict further and further the freedom of the individual. With more and more ASBOs, instant fines, powers of detention without charge, supervision orders, soon the prisons were filled to overflowing.

Despite all this and more⁽⁴⁾ the Premiership somehow succeeded in returning to power once more in 2005. However, none who looked upon it could doubt that it was wounded, even as they noted that the majority of the wounds were self-inflicted. Worse was yet to come when it became clear that, in accordance with immemorial practice, the Government had been merrily sending major party donors towards the ermine outfitters and seats in the House of Lords with all the speed and urgency normally associated with one's bladder suddenly realising that it contains eight pints of Special Brew and it's a long journey to the lavatories. Thus it was that the Premiership saw Mr Blair become the first Prime Minister to be interviewed by police whilst in office, even as eternal rival Gordon Brown at last plucked up courage to insist that Mr Blair set a timetable for his departure.

So it was that, despite a sincere desire to do good, Tony Blair's Premiership passed away, Mr Blair having found himself in charge of a country where the rich have got much richer, widening the gap between themselves and the poor to an unbridgeable gulf; where our children are increasingly segregated by race and/or religion from the moment they enter their schools, at which they may well be taught that the world is mere thousands of years old and the theory of evolution is a lie; where our streets are littered with CCTV cameras and our every detail is recorded on computer; where the poor cannot afford a home and the young cannot afford an education; where Muslims feel themselves vilified by their fellow Britons and other Britons feel fear of their Muslim compatriots; where destitute refugees seeking succour are reviled as spongers and denied the basics of existence; where our prisons are bursting while a hysterical media whips up fear of crime in the streets; and where our armed forces are sent to die on foreign fields in a hopeless cause.

The remains of Tony Blair's Premiership will tour the globe over the next seven weeks, before being buried on 27th June at St Gordon's Church of the Best Served Cold. Buried alongside it will be the corpse of its pet bulldog, John Prescott. It is survived by a country which is more confrontational and less co-operative; for fear, not fellowship and is far, far less equal than it should be.


⁽¹⁾ This is the reverse of the ability of certain university students to insist that they are Irish - running around in heavy sweaters, swilling pints of Guinness, listening to folk music and going on endlessly about "the craic" and "me da''" - despite having been no nearer to Ireland than an accidental trip to Kilburn after failing to get off at Finchley Road on the tube.
⁽²⁾ or two if you count the brilliant way Mr Blair made sure the smoking ban didn't apply to Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One championship.
⁽³⁾ unless the place democracy need spreading was North Korea, China, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Oman, Qatar, Florida &c &c
⁽⁴⁾ top-up fees, the David Kelly affair, Foundation hospitals to name just a few

David Miliband's Labour Leadership Challenge January 2007-April 2007

Blairites and Conservatives eager for a Labour leadership race are donning their mourning weeds and belabouring their underused ballot boxes and overused spin doctors today as they mourn David Miliband's Labour Leadership Challenge, which emerged from the womb of the political media stillborn last night.

David Miliband's Labour Leadership Challenge was born in early 2007, the child of the fondest fantasies (in the case of former Home Secretary and present barrage-balloon Charles Clarke, the fondest non-food-related fantasies) of Blair loyalists and the Chancellor's reputation for not suffering fools, rivals or indeed members of the human race gladly.

The Challenge was the product of the artificial insemination of a surrogate leadership challenger - Environment Secretary and part-time Captain Scarlet imitator David Miliband - with large amounts of hype from friendly columnists in the press, in a process overseen by a shadowy group of Blairite insiders known only as John Reid, Charles Clarke and Peter Mandelson. In what has been hailed by psephologists as a particular breakthrough, the procedure was carried out entirely unbeknownst to Mr Miliband, who, according to the medical team, was far too busy making TV appearances and publishing lengthy articles about his vision for the future to realise what was going on.

For the first three months of the pregnancy all seemed to be going well, with many senior New Labour figures - along with many others without such a shameful past - eagerly promoting Mr Miliband's virtues as a potential leader: happily citing his youth, his quaint lopsided smile and his ability to get the numbers of S.P.E.C.T.R.U.M.'s Symphony, Melody and Harmony Angels off Commander White quicker than you can say Mysteron, not to mention the very important fact that he was not Gordon Brown.

Despite the valiant work of the medical team, however, such a highly complex procedure was always bound to be at risk of failure. Tragically the Challenge failed to make it to term when the anaesthetic effects of a looped tape of the Chancellor's speeches wore off and Mr Miliband came to and insisted that those overseeing the Challenge's birth cease their attempts to give it the oxygen of publicity, after realising that - contrary to the doctors' assurances - continuing with the birth could lead to his political death or, even worse, John Reid becoming leader.

A memorial service for the Challenge will be held this weekend at the Church of St Nick Robinson of the Shining Pate. A weeping Reverend Peter Mandelson will preside and the hymn will be an unusually plaintive rendition of that old Blairite favourite, number 375 "Lead On, O King Eternal".

David Miliband's Labour Leadership Challenge is survived by David Miliband's Blog, Charles Clarke's Doomed Charge at a Group of Windmills and a Conservative Leadership Who Will Stop Laughing Just As Soon As Labour Stop Behaving So Hilariously.

The Prospect of Des Browne Falling on His Sword 6 April 2007 – 16 April 2007

The Prospect of Defence Secretary Des Browne Falling on His Sword, following the media and political furore over his decision to allow the 15 sailors captured by the Iranians to sell their stories to the highest bidder, has passed away following a statement by Mr Browne in the House of Commons, during which he apologised for making a mistake but failed utterly to plummet on to the assorted sabres, daggers, katanas, zweihanders, rapiers, spadones and schiavonas proffered by members of the opposition parties, much to the disappointment of the large crowd that had gathered to witness the death-defying-enabling feat.

The Prospect was conceived rapidly following the release of the Iraq hostages when the Defence Secretary chose the aftermath of one of the more significant naval cock-ups since Robert Maxwell accidentally took up deep-sea-diving to go on holiday and thus failed to question the Navy’s ruling that the sailors could profit from their tales of derring-do and attempts to escape their captors by doing exactly as they were told.

The Prospect was a popular child from the moment of its conception as the newspapers that had failed to offer enough money to secure the sailors’ stories called instead for Mr Browne to thrust his breast forcefully on the nearest pointy object, claiming that sensational tabloid revelations about the sailors' plucky plan to outwit the Iranians – by agreeing to be paraded on Iranian television praising their captors, calling for Britain and America's immediate withdrawal from Iraq and having a nice cup of tea – had caused more damage to the reputation of the Navy than the carnage resulting from a Saturday night in a Plymouth public house.

Despite the Prospect's popularity, it was clear from the outset that the child's father, Mr Browne, had little time for it. Within days of its birth he was already denying he was its father and seeking to smother it by reversing his earlier decision and halting the further sale of stories by the nation’s greatest military heroes since Captain Mainwaring and Corporal Jones.

Despite - or perhaps even because of - its father's callous attitude towards it, the Prospect remained dear to the hearts of large sections of the press, the opposition parties and Iran's President Ahmadinejad. Speculation reached fever pitch as a nation held its breath for Mr Browne's Commons statement, fully expecting him to the decent thing, acknowledge his parentage of the Prospect and allow it to fulfil it's destiny by dropping him on to the nearest sharp implement from a great height.

It was not to be. Expressing "a degree of regret that can be equated with an apology”, Mr Browne failed utterly to acknowledge his offspring, leaving it to pass away as peacefully as a boat full of Royal Navy ratings and Marines surrendering to an Iranian boarding party.

The Prospect of Des Browne Falling on His Sword will be buried quietly at sea, but not too close to Iranian waters. It is survived by the Prospect of Des Browne Being Brutally Assassinated in Gordon Brown's Cabinet Reshuffle.

New Labour's Gambling Addiction 1997-2007

Members of the Government were this morning tearing up their scratchcards, throwing away their betting slips and cashing in their chips following the death of their addiction to gambling, which was shot down in its prime last night by a marauding gang of nonagenarians in ermine hoodies.

New Labour's Gambling Addiction was born in 1997, when Gordon Brown happened upon billions of discarded National Lottery scratchcards lodged in the nations coffers and found that, whatever lay behind the silver foil, they all came up as winners for the Treasury. Despite his reputation as a dour son of the manse, the Chancellor was unable to resist the temptation to see whether it was really possible to live the life of a professional gambler. Soon he was discovering gambling income in all sorts of places, whether from the high street bookmakers, the lottery, trackside betting or online poker.

With industry failing and the expansion of the service sector threatened by the inability of the populous to imbibe more than 16 supersize decaf lattecinos per capita a day without committing murder, or worse, releasing a new Robbie Williams CD, Mr Brown became convinced that the only way to bring home the bacon was to don dark glasses, rechristen himself Snake Eyes and tour the gambling dens of Great Britain.

It was not long before the Chancellor had convinced the rest of the Government to follow his lead, though few achieved his success. Peter Mandelson gambled his reputation on the Millennium Dome's success, John Prescott gambled his marriage on not getting caught in flagrante with his secretary and Tony Blair gambled the nation's armed forces on Iraq.

Only Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell seemed to understand the Chancellors lessons. Soon she and the Chancellor were working as a team, he stacking the decks to ensure a substantial tax take, she diverting the National Lottery's income to replace government spending on National Health and the Olympics. So great was Ms Jowell's enthusiasm, indeed, that she set about weaning the whole nation onto the joys of gambling, bringing forward legislation to flood the country with casinos and supercasinos (understood to be just like ordinary casinos but larger and with a strange vulnerability to Kryptonite).

It was Ms Jowell's enthusiasm that was to prove her undoing. One night she was foolish enough to wander through one of Westminster's seedier areas (the Houses of Parliament), her pockets stuffed with the Governmental IOUs she hoped gambling would enable her to pay off. As she neared the door of the House of Lords, however, she was set upon by a large number of Peers either (a) outraged at the Government's plans to revive poverty-stricken areas by licensing casinos to take the last penny of every local inhabitant or (b) acting in the mistaken belief that the IOUs had something to do with loans for peerages. Whatever the case, the result was a fatal assault on the Government's Gambling Addiction.

New Labour's Gambling Addiction will be buried at St Noel's Church of the Deal or No Deal. The ceremony will be conducted by the Reverend John McCririck and the hymn will be number 5-to-3 on, "All Hail ye Little Lottery Balls".

The Home Office 1782-2007: A Correction

Further to our obituary for the Home Office, we at As A Dodo can now confirm that the ancient office of state will be buried today in a ceremony attended by Home Secretary John Reid and thousands of civil servants eager both to remember their former department and to bag a decent desk in the new one.

The Home Office is survived by twin offspring, The Ministry of Truth (responsible for the courts and the treatment of offenders) and the Ministry of Love (responsible for policing, immigration and anti-terrorism measures). The former will be delivered into the hands of Lord Falconer who will doubtless lavish on it all the care he has lavished on the constitution and the separation of powers in his time as Tony Blair's best mate Lord Chancellor, while the latter will remain in the custody of John Reid, and may God have mercy on its soul.