The Manifestos

The election is less than a fortnight away, and the main parties have published their manifestos. As I understand things, what we have on offer is this: The Labour Party are going to start renaming everything, the first two words of which will be ‘Great British…’. The Tories had a crack at this a couple of years ago, but decided to pass, because none of the entities involved were even close to being ‘Barely Adequate’, let alone ‘Great’. Labour have also publicly stated that they won’t hate Jews anymore, which has turned out to be a surprisingly controversial position to take and has had mixed results. However, most of the real hard core anti-Semites have now left the party and joined the Greens. No, I don’t entirely get that either, but I’ll wager ‘Root out anti-Semites‘ wasn’t on any Green Party members bingo card at the start of the year.

The Reform Party, of Nigel Farage fame, have promised to give everyone £1,000,000 each and to drown all the brown people. Closer scrutiny of their economic plans, which involve an increase in spending greater than all the other parties put together, suggest they are just making shit up. Again. Essentially they are just going to try and drown brown people. And ‘Make Hitler Great Again’, judging by the social media accounts of most of their candidates. And support Trump. And Putin. And then they’ll likely move on to drowning people of other non-white colour.

The Liberals have scaled back their 2019 aim of rejoining the EU to simply rejoining the Single Market. They’ve also decided to highlight that their leader is a jolly decent bloke who is a carer for his severely disabled son when not doing politics. The Greens? Well, the usual environmental stuff, when they’re not pursuing Nazis. And when I say Nazis, I do of course mean Jews. That brings us to the SNP, who are once again claiming that if they win a bunch of seats then they’ll (continue to fruitlessly) campaign for a new Scottish Independence referendum. But they mostly seem to be going to prison for corruption, so I’m not too sure how seriously to take them.

That leaves us with the Tories. They’ve split into enough factions to provide ample material for a new Monty Python movie. The Popular Peoples Front of Chipping Norton would like to try and return to One Nation guff, whilst the Peoples Popular Front of Fareham and Waterlooville wants to join up with Reform. Which is a little ironic because she’s brown and they’re going to drown her. And truth be told, that momentarily had me thinking about voting for Reform. Otherwise, CCHQ is reminiscent of the Führerbunker in the last hours as the Russians closed in. Absolute scenes. In an effort to try and sound normal, Sunak’s PR mocked Ed Davey for having a severely disabled kid and released an advert suggesting voting Labour was a massive gamble just hours before it was revealed yet another Tory had placed a dodgy bet on the date of the election the day before it was announced. Both went down like a turd floating in a swimming pool, so arguably he did sound normal in that uniquely Tory way.

It all leaves me feeling that I could do better. I do have ideas. Great ideas. Great British Ideas, if I’m ever a Labour candidate. A four day working week. Round up and deport to Rwanda every Wetherspoons punter – that’ll fix the ‘too many people’ and wrong type of people’ problems. Two birds, one stone. I will demand clothes shops install seats for men to sit in while they wait for their womenfolk. Put all youngsters on long term unemployment benefits into the army. Launch BBC Kremlin TV to mock and taunt Putin, just for shits and giggles. But my key manifesto policy would be the Morality Police, a terrific idea I’d import from Iran.

I’m not suggesting they go around beating up women for having their hair showing. Not at all. I want them to go around and administer instant justice to the scum and villainy that have taken over our towns and cities. To apply punishments ranging from ‘A Bit Of A Slap‘, to ‘A Good Kicking‘ with ‘Proper Savage Beating‘ reserved for the worst offenders. It’ll be popular. A vote winner. I’d go so far as to suggest a second term would be a nailed on certainty. People will enjoy watching the nation’s spitters, litterers, vandalises, fare evaders, stabbers, robbers, shop lifters, perverts and the rest get a bit of instant karma.

Some of my ‘ideas’ are more serious than others. There is a certain amount of tongue inserted in the proverbial cheek. But what really matters to me, and to most people, is the state of my local neighbourhood. Every day I walk past skanks openly shooting up in the gardens. Every shut down shop has a homeless person camped in the doorways. Litter is everywhere. Stabbings and rape have become considerably more frequent. Ticketless passengers push past barriers at train stations virtually unchallenged. I walk past numerous piles of shattered glass where car windows have been put through by thieves. I watch shop lifters fill bags. I watch the staff watch the shoplifters. I’ll tell what I almost never see though. A policeman. Society is broken.

It didn’t use to be like this. This is the legacy of fourteen years of Tory rule. It needs to be fixed. It’ll be Labour’s job to do so, of that there is no doubt. I hope they have a better plan that just coming up with a fancy name. The Great British Society just isn’t going to cut the mustard.