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.

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.

Gordon's Secret Love 1979-2007

We at As A Dodo regret that we must issue yet another of our frequent apologies, this time in respect of the following obituary for the secret love of Gordon Brown for Margaret Thatcher, which appears to have been drafted while our staff member was writing under the influence of Simon Bates.

I wanna talk to you about a guy called Gordon. Gordon was a guy from Scotland. He was a big guy. He was a political guy, a Labour guy. Back in the late 70s Gordon was also a lonely guy. Sure he had his mates in the Labour party, his pals in TV production, but Gordon knew there was something missing in his life. He knew he needed a special lady to love.

But then, in 1979, Maggie walked into his life. When Gordon caught sight of her on the TV, standing outside Downing Street proclaiming the words of St Francis's prayer, he was amazed. Maggie was bold, she was brave and - with the way the sunlight glinted off her helmet of blonde hair and the fires burned in the pupils of her steel-blue eyes - she was beautiful.

But Gordon had a problem. You see, Maggie wasn't popular with the Labour Party. She was the woman every Labour member loved to hate. Gordon knew that he could never speak a word of his love to anyone.

And so the long, painful years of Gordon's Secret Love began. He tried to snatch a glance of her whenever he could, running off into quiet corners to gaze adoringly at the telly as she crushed the unions, defended the Falklands, enriched the yuppies, raised unemployment rates and reduced the welfare state. He couldn't bear to be apart from her.

At last, in '83, Gordon found himself in Parliament, finally able to gaze upon his beloved across the floor of the House of Commons. Yet still he could say nothing. Still he had to pretend to hate the woman he loved so deeply. But at least Gordon now had a new friend, a friend I'll call Tony, to lean on. One night he confessed his Secret Love to Tony. Tony gave him a hug, told him to be brave, told him his secret was safe.

And that's when the biggest blow came. Next thing you know, Tony was doing the rounds of the TV studios and newspapers, telling everyone he could about Tony's deep love of Maggie. Soon Maggie was being seen around town with Tony, hanging on his every word and praising him to the skies. Gordon felt betrayed. He felt a fool.

Gordon tried to hide his hurt. He started wooing a girl called Prudence, journeying into a dark world of fiscal constraints and economic bondage. He also tried to hurt the one he loved. He said Maggie showed "a degree of malice in her conduct about the health service". He accused her of "far-right, far-fetched, far-out dogma". He tried to blame her for all of society's ills. But in his heart of hearts Gordon knew he still loved Maggie.

And then it happened. In 2007, Tony fell off a political cliff. Some say they saw a big Scottish guy called Gordon at the scene, but who knows. What we do know is that Gordon at last felt he could proclaim his love for Maggie to the whole world. Now Maggie was taking tea at Number 10 with Gordon and basking in the light of a thousand camera flashes beside him. Gordon's Secret Love was a secret no more.

And so, for Gordon, for Maggie, and in memory of Gordon's Secret Love I'd like to play you their tune ... Highway to Hell by AC/DC.

Gordon's Secret Love will be buried at the church of Our Iron Lady of the Photo Opportunity. The congregation will be accompanied by the sound of assorted deceased members of both the Labour and Conservative parties revolving in their graves.

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.

British Military Presence in Basra 2003-2007

The British Military Presence in Basra, part of that joint mission with the United States to extract oil from bring peace and democracy to the benighted country of Iraq, has been zipped up in a body bag as troops withdrew relocated to the airport – marking the end of a foreign adventure with all the mishap-free success of M. Hulot's Holiday.

The British Military Presence in Basra was first established in 1917 as our brave Tommies secured the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s interests in neighbouring Persia freed the region from the evil clutches of the Ottoman Empire, and formed the modern state of Iraq from three rival ethnic groups – the Kurds, the Shi’as and the Sunnis – who have, ever since, co-existed peacefully with their new neighbours.

Granting independence to Iraq in 1932 the British retained a military presence in the region because large deposits of oil had been discovered there, re-invading the country in 1941 to stop Germany from stealing the oil and just “minding it for the Iraqis” for a short while as part of the struggle against the evils of Hitler. Despite British heroism in defence of the oil 17 years later an ungrateful Iraqi Army overthrew the Anglophile puppet government monarchy and set about using their new-found freedom and economic independence to terrorise their population all by themselves.

And so, for a while, Britain withdrew altogether from Iraq. In 1991, however, the latest of Baghdad's loyal friends of the West despots, Saddam Hussein, had set his sights on Kuwait’s oil fields and American and British troops again invaded to restore peace and democracy. While the Americans stopped short of Baghdad, our brave boys conquered Basra and soon felt at home there amidst its ancient streets and traditional Officer’s Club and NAAFI (est. 1917). Withdrawing from the city after a regimental sherry and bridge evening got out of hand, British troops were powerless to intervene as the Republican Guard slaughtered Shi’as in their thousands.

Following the discovery of weapons of mass destruction a dodgy thesis written by a Canadian student a fictional link between the Saddam regime and Al Qaeda, the Allies were welcomed back into Iraq as heroic liberators in 2003, as Tony Blair decided to make his mark in history and to be judged by God back Donald Rumsfeld's George W. Bush’s daring plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein and free Iraq’s giant oil reserves.

Although it was our American allies who were to bear the brunt of Iraqi ingratitude for bombing their country back to the Stone Age liberating their oil them from the nightmare of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, even in Basra mutterings of discontent were heard. Soon these mutterings grew into a more audible collective tut and British troops found they were no longer welcome in the city’s clubs and late-night kebab houses, unless accompanied by a large amount of bombing and rifle-fire from local insurgents.

So it was this week that the “pre-planned” decision to withdraw all British troops to the city’s airport was taken amidst much criticism from the Americans whose decision to “surge” more troops into Baghdad earlier in the year had so successfully pushed the insurgents into the rest of the country and enabled the Iraqi government to take a well deserved holiday.

Denying accusations that they were abandoning Basra to the Iraqi Army – an organisation with all the effectiveness of Warmington-on-Sea's Home Guard (but with better weapons) and all the loyalty to its leadership of a member of the Tory party, the Queen’s Own Light Baggage Handlers Brigade and 2 Para Confiscation of Water Bottles and Nail Files Battalion quickly established control of Basra airport and began merrily wishing happy tourists and business travellers “a good one-way flight out of Basra”.

And so it was that with the US accusing the UK of abandoning Basra and the UK accusing the US’s policy in Iraq of being “fatally flawed”, the last post was sounded and the owners of Basra’s clubs and late-night kebab houses breathed a sigh of relief.

The British Military Presence in Basra will be buried very quietly. The service will be conducted by the CEO of British Petroleum. It is not expected that our American allies will attend. It is survived by The British Military Presence in Afghanistan and The British Military Presence in Aldershot – both of which have been causing much hardship and unhappiness to locals since the 19th century.

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 Special Relationship 1776-2007

The Special Relationship, that beautiful alliance between Britain and the United States that saw the British give America unswerving support in times of conflict in return for America giving Britain Dick Van Dyke's cormickiully acksarntid Cockernee chimernee sweep in Mary Poppins, has - we are advised by International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander and Foreign Office Minister Lord Maloch-Brown - passed away.

The Special Relationship between Britain and America was born following the break-up of the Old Relationship between the two countries, after America grew tired of Britain always trying to cadge money off it and decided to throw Britain and all its things out ... including that bloody awful tea it insisted on drinking.

Due to the acrimonious nature of the split it was not, for many decades, apparent that something Special had been born. Indeed it wasn’t until World War Two that Winston Churchill - himself the fruit of the union between a Briton and an American - first realised that Britain was completely stuffed without the support of the most powerful country in the world made for America and the Special Relationship flowered anew, based on Britain being forced to flog off everything it owned to afford financially-crippling lend-lease arrangements the free, trusting and open sharing of ideas and resources that saw the two countries – united as one – defeat the Nazis⁽¹⁾.

Following such a successful beginning, it was little surprise that the love between the pair continued, ehen as America grew richer and stronger (and quite a lot fatter) and the United Kingdom became poorer and weaker (and also quite a lot fatter). America loved Britain's history and relics (particularly the royal family) and Britain worshipped America's enormous power and wealth appetite for happiness and adventure (and food).

Beneath the surface, however, all was not well and there were rumours of both countries dallying with others. Britain was frequently seduced by the continental allure and Gauloises-wreathed intellectual mysteriousness of France, but constantly rebuffed by a France deeply suspicious that Britain saw her only as the nearest ‘available’ country and was much more turned on by France's cheap booze, cheap fags and cheap summer homes than by her passionate interest in developing a Gauloises-wreathed critique of the later films of Jerry Lewis. Meanwhile, the United States began to cruise around the globe looking for a no-strings-attached good time but frequently ending up with a much bigger bang for its buck than it expected – as a series of 'one-night stands with no expectations and no hassle' led to it waking again and again in the middle of a massive hangover and a long-term abusive relationship.

Ironically, it was as America embarked on yet another such relationship - its heart having been smitten by oil the sensual beauty of Iraq - that there was a late-flowering in The Special Relationship as a love-struck Tony Blair, eager to secure himself a place in history and a lucrative post-premiership lecture tour in the States stand shoulder-to-shoulder with George Bush, persuaded Britain to snuggle up to its old flame, even joining America in a sado-masochistic menage-a-trois with its Iraqi lover.

Sadly, while the countries' leaders remained in love with each other, Britain and America themselves were becoming less keen on the idea of spending all their time in bed together and The Special Relationship began to break down. With the sweeping of Tony Blair from power and the hobbling of George Bush's Presidency, the Relationship - despite protestations from Gordon Brown and David Milliband that it was alive and well and planning to try for a baby in the autumn… Fall… no, autumn!... whatever - expired.

The Special Relationship will be buried at St Vegas's Little Chapel of the Drive-In Divorce. The American members of the congregation will sing Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up is Hard to Do with a big grin on their faces while the British will sing Ken Dodd’s Happiness with tears streaming down their cheeks. Afterwards the joint CD collection will be ceremoniously divided with George Bush keeping the Best of Huey Lewis and the News single and Gordon Brown clutching a copy of the Arctic Monkey’s first album… whatever it’s called…

⁽¹⁾ with perhaps just a teensy bit of help from the 10,000,000 Russians who died in the war and their comrades.

The Royal Prerogative mid-5th Century-2007

In the light of recent criticism, we at As A Dodo are sad⁽¹⁾ at having to burden our readers with yet another badly-researched, ill-informed, mendacious and mean-spirited travesty, 'obituarising' (if we may be forgiven the somewhat ugly coinage) yet another easy target, The Royal Prerogative.

The Royal Prerogative was born in Britain in the middle of the 5th Century AD, following the collapse of the Roman Empire's last outposts in Albion. It succeeded the Imperial Prerogative, those powers which, according to scholars, allowed the Emperors of Rome to spread literacy, hygiene, roads, international trade and (like Gordon Brown) taxation and which, according to viewers of BBC2's "Rome", allowed all Romans to wander round with their kit off, have lots of sex and stab at least 20 people an episode.

The Royal Prerogative constituted those powers, privileges and immunities which were the appanage of British kingship. The earliest ruler known to have exercised such power was the legendary King Vortigern, who used The Prerogative chiefly to give control of parts of England to the Saxons, a tradition which Eurosceptics claim has been upheld in more recent times by successive UK Governments.

The centuries that followed Vortigern were to see a steady erosion of Prerogative power. The first to feel this was King Canute, whose attempt to bypass not merely Parliament but Mother Nature by issuing an Order in Council preventing the rising tide ended in humiliation and barnacles on his sceptre and orbs.

Though by the end of Elizabeth I's reign the House of Commons was to claim that while ‘the prerogatives of princes may easily and do daily grow … the privileges of the subject being once lost are not recovered but with much disquiet’, the next 80 years were to see The Prerogative decline even more rapidly. When Charles I attempted to use The Prerogative to rule and fund his administration without Parliament's approval (something which gave rise to the traditional office of Rouge Lord Levy Cash-Pursuivant) he swiftly had it cut off - along with his head - by Oliver Cromwell and his Parliamentary followers. Even after the restoration, Parliament was increasingly keen to flex its muscles against arbitrary rule by the monarch, leading to 1688's "Glorious" Revolution and the 1700 Act of Settlement which did to the The Prerogative pretty much what a red-hot poker did to Edward II.

Stripped of much of its power, The Prerogative was to struggle on, now vested in "The Crown", rather than the monarch, and used by Government to do everything from declaring wars, ordering the dissolution of Parliament (as opposed to the dissolution of MPs, many of whom can be pretty dissolute all by themselves) to choosing bishops, leaving the monarch his or herself to be contented with owning all the kingdom's swans and sturgeons.

Despite its age and relative feebleness, The Prerogative was still exercised on a regular basis. Even in the early 21st Century Prime Minister Blair was giving it a run round in the yard on a regular basis, usually in order to get it to declare war on other countries. With the passing of this last loyal master, however, it was clear to all that The Prerogative was not fit to survive in the modern world and it was put down at the behest of its new owner, Gordon Brown.

The Royal Prerogative will be buried this weekend. Tony Blair will read from the Book of Britney "Everybody's talking all this stuff about me, why don't they just let me live? I don't need permission, make my own decisions, that's my prerogative".

⁽¹⁾ By which we mean, "too gorged on our own self-satisfaction to give a monkey's".

The Middle East 3,000BC-2007AD

It is with great sadness (and not a little alarm), that As A Dodo must today report what is understood to be the imminent passing of the Middle East - that part of the world that saw the creation of civilisation, the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and (partly as a consequence of those three births) the fomentation of several thousand years of conflict and destruction - following news that a Mr Tony Blair, former resident of Downing Street and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is to be appointed as Special Envoy to the region.

The Middle East was born in about 3,000BC when peoples in and around Egypt, Gaza and Mesopotamia became tired of the boring aspects of a life of itinerant goat-and-camel-herding (the boring bits being just about everything to do with goat-and-camel herding, especially all the getting spat at and butted by those they were responsible for ⁽¹⁾) and decided to build themselves a more settled and less goat-and-camel-intensive existence by setting up mighty city states.

Now free from the constant butting and spitting that had so distracted them in their past lives, the people of those city states were able to go about the business of creating the foundations of civilisation, such as reading, writing, mathematics, politics and having really good wars. This last was particularly aided by the habit of those in the region of coming up with new and mutually incompatible religions.

The millennia would see the rise and fall of many civilisations and empires in the region: the Sumerians, Babylonians, Ancient Egyptians and Assyrians were all to find themselves on top at one point and wiped away the next. Soon the Romans were getting in on the act, incidentally deciding to sow the seeds of future conflict by destroying the Jewish temple and abolishing the land of Israel. The (initially) pagan Romans themselves were later replaced as regional rulers by the Christian Byzantines. By the 7th Century AD they were to find themselves having to share space with the newly arrived Muslims. With Jews, Muslims and Christians all reluctantly sharing the same land and all convinced that the region of Palestine was really, really sacred to them, the conditions for a really good scrap were now set.

Over the next several hundred years, the peoples of the region - along with various Crusaders, Turks, Mongols, Ottomans, Germans, Italians, French, British and Americans - would do their best to ensure that the fighting never ceased. Yet somehow the region managed to survive ... until today. For today it became clear that the powers of Europe, Russia, America and the UN had chosen to give responsibility for assisting peace negotiations in the Middle East to none other than Tony Blair, a man whose policies on the region have proved so unpopular with his own people that he has been forced into a premature resignation.

Mr Blair impressed reporters with his immediate pledge to "do whatever is necessary" to find an "enduring resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue" ... provided always that "whatever is necessary" didn't mean disagreeing with President Bush. He is expected to set off for the region - guitar in hand, crucifix in pocket and cilice round thigh - as soon as possible to re-start peace negotiations, a process it is understood that he plans to assist by lightening the current awkward atmosphere by persuading his good pal Sir Cliff Richard to sing a couple of choruses of The Millennium Prayer to the assembled representatives of Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Hamas and Fatah before calling - like President Bush before him - for all those present to show a little Christian charity to each other ... and then suggesting the whole Middle East problem could be resolved by bombing Iran.

The Middle East will be buried under large piles of rubble and a weatherbeaten "road map for peace" at St Tony's Church of the Legacy. It will be survived by increased oil prices, nuclear proliferation, numerous terrorist groups and 15 iPods the captured British sailors left behind in Iran.

⁽¹⁾ Interestingly, these same things are today the most boring bits about being a Premiership referee.

PS As A Dodo readers wishing to revel in contemplate the Prime Minister's departure may wish to click on our obituary for Tony Blair's Premiership.

Political Reporting c. 17th Century–2007

Political Reporting, that hard-won freedom of the Fourth Estate to expose the lying, warmongering, scandalous, corrupt bastards who lord it over us analyse and comment on parliamentary machinations has today died of its wounds after being savaged in a speech by Tony Blair.

The birth of political reporting is a matter of some dispute between biographers. Some suggest it was born just after the Battle of Hastings, though this claim has not been taken seriously, largely because the alleged political report - the Bayeux Tapestry - only ever had one copy published and that copy was far too big to be carried on the paperboy’s bicycle⁽¹⁾ or to fit through readers' letterboxes⁽²⁾.

Such matters, along with similar reasons for disputing the claims of Babylonian carvings, Ancient Egyptian obelisks and even Roman wax tablets as evidencing the birth of political reporting, led most experts to conclude that it was the 17th century that saw the birth of Political Reporting as pamphlets and news periodicals began to print balanced and incisive coverage of such stories as the Gunpowder Plot, which generated a plethora of fascinating headlines including “Fawkes offed!” (Ye Sunne), “For Fawkes' Sake!” (Ye Mirrore) and “House Prices Rise Again” (Ye Daily Expresse)

It was not many decades before such pamphlets had grown into regular newspapers. By 1788 The Times was founded, enabling its readers - mere months later - to bemoan the terrible decline in its standards and hark back to how the paper used to be.

It was with the rapid extension of political suffrage during the Victorian era, however, that political reporting reached its height. The public clamoured for more and more news of the day’s events in Westminster and abroad and new and exciting newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph and Eth Monchaster Grauniad sprang up quicker than a five-year-old ascending the interior of a chimney.

This golden age could not last for ever. The inter-war years saw the first signs of a decline in the health of Political Reporting as newspapers began to abandon straight reporting in favour of influencing political events. Leading the charge was The Daily Mail, which first sought to bring down the country's first Labour government in 1924 by the publication of the Zinoviev letter, then sought to bring down democracy itself by supporting Oswald Mosley, Mussolini and Hitler - leading the Government to threaten it with closure ... and insist that the paper's owner Lord Rothermere drop the word “Nazi” from the Mail's “Ideal Nazi Home Exhibition”.

The trend was to worsen down the years. When Australian newspaper tycoon Rupert Murdoch took over The Sun in 1969, Political Reporting took a turn for the worse as politicians began to court the Australian editor in his top secret headquarters deep beneath Earls Court, where he was often to be found, surrounded by a bevy of topless beauties, sitting in a swivel chair, stroking his wombat. The influence of Mr Murdoch's Sun soon became legendary – and with headlines like “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster” cost Freddie Starr the 1979 general election.

Meanwhile Political Reporting had turned to the television as millions of viewers tuned in to see if Reginald Bosanquet could get through the news without falling off his chair and, later, received a much-needed fillip when young upstart Jeremy Paxman regularly upset politicians by outrageously insisting that they answer the question he’d asked them.

Despite this brief televisual flowering, by the 21st century Political Reporting had reached its nadir. TV newsreaders could only deliver the news whilst walking and talking (a practice which had failed disastrously when attempted with Reginald Bosanquet), the BBC had abandoned the practice of delivering the news whilst wearing dinner jackets in favour of John Humphrys cruising the streets of Westminster in the radio car wearing a hoodie and packing an Uzi and the newspapers themselves refused to report anything at all unless it featured a member of the Royal Family, a pop star, a footballer or an orange-skinned and bawling ex-inhabitant of the Big Brother house. Matters had reached such a parlous state that some people even began to rely upon the internet and political bloggers for accurate and incisive commentary on the political events of the day, leading many to conclude that President George Bush was in fact a chimpanzee, the Labour Party had sold England to a cabal of 12 foot high ant-men who secretly ruled the European Union and that the leading question of the day was Britney Spears's lack of sufficient funds to pay for any underwear.

Thus it was that when, in one of his final speeches as prime minister, Tony Blair raised his voice to drown out the cries of “pot, kettle” and "motes and beams" and accuse the media of hunting like a "feral beast tearing people and reputations to bits", Political Reporting was mortally wounded. Unrelenting, the Prime Minister continued his vicious attack, insisting that his government the deteriorating coverage of political reporting had "sapped the country's confidence and self-belief; it undermines its assessment of itself, its institutions and above all else it reduces our capacity to take the right decisions in the right spirit for our future." Only having delivered himself of this verdict did Mr Blair end his assault, leaving the assembled throng to stare briefly at the corpse before rushing out to stand aimlessly on Westminster Green waiting to deliver a live piece for the 24 hour news.

Political Reporting will be buried at St Alastair Campbell's Church of the Twisted Perception, Westminster. The service will be conducted by the Reverend Reginald Bosanquet who will - it is hoped - not mistake the font for a urinal this time.

⁽¹⁾ which also presented another difficulty in that it had not yet been invented.
⁽²⁾ which had also irritatingly failed to be invented yet.

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 Death of the Cold War 1989-2007

The Death of the Cold War died last night when MPs voted by a majority of 248 to renew Britain's Trident nuclear submarines, thus bringing the country kicking and screaming into the 1950s, prepared at any moment to deter the threat of a massive nuclear attack by the forces of the USSR, the Eastern Bloc and Red China with the prospect of mutually assured destruction, despite the fact that the USSR no longer exists, the Eastern Bloc's forces are already working over here as plumbers and the biggest invasion threat from China is from a large amount of extremely cheap T-shirts.

The Death of the Cold War began in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall which left that once divided city vulnerable to unscrupulous capitalists determined to (literally) smash communism - charging $10 a throw for a piece of grafittied rubble and leaving the city wide open to the horror of an invading army of Pink Floyd fans.

Soon Eastern Bloc countries - sick of suffering under the yoke of communist oppression and the occasional visit by Sir Paul McCartney - were demanding the right to hold their own concerts featuring 70s rock dinosuars, elect democratic governments, eat quarter-pounders with cheese and yearn for the days of communist oppression.

Thanks to the Death a generation raised on a constant diet of Cold War paranoia - including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, When the Wind Blows, Red Dawn and Noel's House Party - breathed a collective sigh of relief as the superpowers stepped back from the brink of nuclear annihilation. At last ordinary citizens could go about their business safe in the knowledge that the man in the park whispering "the red squirrel flies low over the Volga tonight" wasn't a Soviet agent trying to start World War Three but an alternative comedian filming an ironic lager commercial.

All seemed well with the Death of the Cold War until yesterday when, urged on by our Great Leader and his predecessor Comrade Blair, Britain chose to follow the examples of such great nations as Iran and North Korea and commission itself some nuclear weapons to prove to the world that, for all it seems to be a crumbling state unable even to care for the health of its people, it is in truth a powerful player on the global stage. The great leader's success was due in no small part to the work of the official opposition and its leader Comrade Cameron, whose only request was that all the new missiles be fitted with windmills so they can generate gigaWatts of environmentally-friendly electricity as they hurtle towards Minsk at several thousands mile per hour.

The Death of the Cold War will be buried on May Day at Whitehall at a ceremony witnessed by Comrade Brown, who will stand on the newly erected balcony at Ten Downing Street, smile grimly beneath his Homburg, and stiffly salute a march-past of the missiles of the Glorious People's Republic of Britain... before personally executing the 95 Labour rebels who voted against him.

It is survived by the memory of a time when Tony Blair supported CND, the four-minute warning and shooting your irradiated grandmother with a 12-bore to stop her getting her crazed, mutated hands on your last tin of Alphabetti Spaghetti.

Bush and Blair 2001-2007

Comedy fans are mourning the death of one of the world's funniest double acts, Bush and Blair, following today's shock announcement by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that he has decided to withdraw from his comic partnership with the USA's President George Bush and will no longer be joining him on the set of the latest in their series of hilarious "Road To" movies, "The Road To A New Vietnam".

It was in 2001 that Tony Blair decided to replace his former sidekick Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton after Clinton's comic persona as a loveable lothario - and catchphrase "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" - began to prove box-office death in America's post-millennial moral climate. Initially Blair had hoped to hook up with Clinton's old straight man, Al Gore, but was to opt instead for the guy behind the tongue-tied goof routine that stole American hearts and votes during the 2000 Presidential Election.

Almost immediately Bush and Blair began preparations for their hilariously titled - and now notorious - "Bringing Democracy" World Tour, Blair spending each day working on the wonderfully ludicrous "I'm a Pretty Straight Kinda Guy" routine that had won him the laughter of audiences across the United Kingdom, while Dubya perfected everything from his "Kenny Boy Lay? - Never Met Him In My Life" skit to the death-defying piece of physical comedy that was "Chewing A Pretzel".

With Bush and Blair's comic characters in place, Dubya playing a knuckle-dragging jock and Blair the smooth-talking poodle that insisted on following him everywhere he went, Bush's long-time manager Dick Cheney spotted the box-office potential in the sequence of scripts that would become the pair's "Road To" movies. Soon they were laughing on "The Road to Democracy", sweeping along the dusty "Road to Afghanistan Liberation" and crying on "The Road to Iraqi Freedom" (known in Britain under the title "The Road to Electoral Suicide").

It was during the filming of the last of these three movies that rumours of a split first began to surface. Crew members reported the sounds of heated arguments emerging from the pair's trailer and more and more often the once inseparable duo were seen to arrive and leave the set apart. The cause, some claim, was the latest script optioned for the pair by Mr Cheney, "The Road To Iran" (also known as "The Road to Armageddon"). Whatever the basis for the dispute, it was increasingly clear that relations between the two men had begun to sour. Indeed it came as little surprise when, on Tuesday night, Mr Blair announced that he would be pulling out of the duo's latest lraq tour, "The Big Troop Surge", to concentrate on other projects.

The comedy duo that was Bush and Blair will be remembered fondly by its fans, both of whom can be found in a secure wing of The Charge of the Light Brigade Hospital for the Militarily Insane.

Bush and Blair are now working on their solo projects: Tony Blair's "Legacy Tour" (fans should be aware that the tour has now been considerably shortened) and George Bush's "Who Gives A Crap? I Ain't Standing For Election Again" stand-up appearances in Washington's premier comedy venue, the White House.

Loans for Peerages 2005-2007

Loans for Peerages – the modern, democratic method by which our unelected rulers are appointed to the House of Lords – was found dead this week shortly after Tony Blair was questioned for a second time by the Metropolitan Police. Sources indicate that foul play is suspected.

Loans for Peerages was born just before the general election in 2005, the child of Labour’s desperate need to prop up its ailing finances and an antiquated system of appointing anyone with a spare million to the unelected upper chamber of the Palace of Westminster.

It proved to be a popular baby: within days of its birth it was attracting unprecedented media attention as it crawled, literally, from boardroom to boardroom soliciting “loans” at a rate of interest not seen in your High Street building society since your manager got high on genuine Albanian champagne-style fizz at the last Christmas party and opened the vaults saying, “Take whatever you want.” Within only two years, however, it was causing controversy, with Scotland Yard detectives forced to step in after complaints that it had committed offences under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925 when some lenders alleged that they hadn’t received their ermine-collared free gifts.

The death of Loans for Peerages was first, mistakenly, reported last year, following claims that it had been fatally wounded following the arrest of Labour’s chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, and the questioning under caution ofMPs and officials from Labour and other parties. The reports turned out to be false when it was revealed early in 2007 that, far from being dead, Loans for Peerages had merely been swept under the nearest available piece of carpet.

Loans for Peerages' resurrection was to prove brief. Its death knell was sounded by the arrest of Mr Blair's "gatekeeper" Ruth Turner, and the re-arrest of Lord Levy on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, not forgetting a further police interview with Tony Blair himself, who is believed to have explained that he saw nothing of Loans for Peerages at all as he was tying his shoelaces at the time.

Loans for Peerages was buried by the highest bidder at the Church of Deal or No Deal. Following a brief sermon by the Reverend David Lloyd George, the collection trough was passed, a deeply emotional eulogy was read by several very rich men who mourned their chances of ever becoming peers by the back door, and a choir of businessmen sang hymn number 427 "What a Friend We Have in Tony".

Loans for Peerages is survived by a discredited government, a quasi-mediaeval system of patronage and the imminent findings of Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates’s inquiry.

The English Counter-Reformation 2006-2007

Political historians have today confirmed the death of the English Counter-Reformation, the attempt by a devout group led by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Secretary of State for Communities Ruth Kelly and Prime Minister Tony Blair to overturn more than 300 years of the English state not being told what to do by the Church.

It was in the summer of 2006 that the desperate band, inspired by such martyrs as Sir Thomas "throw another heretic on the barbie" More and Guy "not the political blogger" Fawkes, not to mention the religious teachings of the 43rd President of the United States, the blessed George W of Bush, first hatched an audacious plan to suborn the will of Parliament to anybody who could claim they received direct instructions from (a) a higher being and/or (b) the aforementioned Mr Bush.

It is understood that the group first began meeting in secret in the middle of 2006, when - along with a large number of faith leaders from across the country - they hatched plans to overcome the will of Parliament by forcing the abandonment of the Faith School Quotas scheme. It was the startling success of this project that led the group to plot their most audacious coup yet - blowing up the provisions of the Equality Act 2006 with regard to adoption of children by homosexual couples on the grounds that the idea of placing children in the care of loving couples of the same sex was abhorrent to God, whereas heterosexual couples who occasionally play "hide the sausage" in the wrong bit of the bun are just indulging in a little forgivable experimentation.

In January 2007, as their plan to blow up the Equality Act 2006 neared completion, the plotters were joined by no less a figure than the Archbishop of Canterbury who, despite having argued that it is "imperative to give the strongest support to the defence of homosexual people against violence, bigotry and legal disadvantage" still held it more important to support the view of anybody who espoused a faith, however medieval, than his own moral beliefs. Soon the Archbishop was supporting the rebels' stance in public and in private allowing them a secret meeting place inside his beard.

It was only this week that the Counter-Reformers were apprehended whilst trying to to sneak a number of explosive crucifixes into the cellars of the Houses of Parliament. Though the Archbishop and Cardinal are expected to be allowed to go free as a mark of respect for their offices, Messrs Kelly and Blair will be publicly hanged, drawn and quartered by their party colleagues.

The English Counter Reformation 2006-2007 is survived by the Equality Act 2006 and the tattered remnants of Tony Blair's leadership of the Government.

Tony Blair's Green Credentials 1994-2007

Tony Blair’s Green Credentials died this week after a long battle with plausibility when they were finally shot down in flames by his own sustainable development adviser, JonathonPorritt

Tony Blair’s Green Credentials were born in July 1994 when he became leader of the Labour Party and immediately began throwing out old Labour policies harmful to the chances of Tony Blair ever becoming prime minister. Clause IV – the party’s commitment to the common ownership of the means of production and exchange – was replaced with more Blair-friendly values such as unbridled consumerism, private finance initiatives and large cash “loans” for peerages, along with a new emphasis on sounding caring about the environment while actually doing bugger all about it.

With New Labour’s election victory in May 1997 Tony Blair’s Green Credentials were firmly ensconced at Number Ten – behind a desk made from timber taken from a renewable source, and in an office powered solely by the sun shining out of Mr Blair’s backside.

Tony's Green Credentials made their mark on the map by instigating a widespread plan to reduce governmental waste by recycling old Conservative policies such as privatising national assets, mucking up education and the NHS, appointing Home Secretaries who apparently base their moral philosophy on Genghis Khan and allowing cabinet ministers to become embroiled in embarrassing personal and financial scandals.

The unwavering pursuit of the eco-friendly even extended beyond Britain’s borders when, despite evidence to the contrary, Tony's Green Credentials refused to create new foreign policies, instead insisting on using second-hand American policies on waste disposal - largely involving the transportation of metals, explosives and depleted uranium to the Middle East where they were used to recycle buildings into rubble and people into bodybags

Sadly the continuing uncontrolled noxious emissions from cabinet ministers – particularly John Reid, David Millibandand Ruth Kelly – sounded the death knell for Tony Blair’s Green Credentials. When Mr Blair himself refused to accept the disastrous consequences of long-haul flights for the environment, or the unacceptable size of the scandal footprint left by his free holidays at the homes of bland UK pop stars, the Credentials slipped into a coma before being pronounced dead by green activists and Mr Blair's own environment minister.

The service for Tony Blair’s Green Credentials will be conducted at St Sellafield's Holy Roman Reprocessing Plant before being leaked into the Irish Sea.

Tony Blair’s Green Credentials are survived by David Cameron’s solar-powered, hydro-electric windmill and Menzies Campbell’s extraordinary conservation of energy.

Dodo News Alert: Tony Blair's Sanity

As A Dodo has received as yet unconfirmed reports of the Death of Tony Blair's Sanity. Following a series of health scares over the past nine years (many occurring shortly after meetings with President George W Bush), it is being reported that Mr Blair's Sanity has finally passed away in Dubai whilst calling for the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan to defend democracy. Claims are coming in that the death of the Prime Minister's Sanity was masked by the huge peals of uncontrollable laughter coming from his audience of unelected rulers-by-birth whose word is law and whose money is kept in Swiss bank accounts.

More on this if and when our freedom-loving government grants us permission to release this or any other information.

News alert ends