These are crazy times for British politics. What on earth is going to happen next? That’s what we’re all wondering. It’s like a TV series that just got cancelled so the writers are trying to cram five seasons of plot ideas into the last episode. It genuinely feels like it’s nearly all over.
Don’t worry, though, it isn’t! No one can stop time. This is just a weird bit. Before you know it we’ll be back to the quiet aeons of comforting magma. In the meantime, what about all the party leadership contests, eh? Labour, the Conservatives and Ukip. Nice timing, guys! Here we are in midstream and the horses we’re riding keep squabbling and resigning. Serves us right for making them take us into the stream, I suppose. We were heading for a perfectly good bridge.
To be fair, the Tories have sorted themselves out for now. Faced with the prospect of their fate being decided by the party’s 150,000 weirdo members, the MPs have agreed not to have a contest at all. Very sensible. I don’t know why political parties ever started asking their memberships to choose new leaders. That was the one thing MPs actually did well.
The ousting of Thatcher by Tory MPs in 1990 was amazing. It was a betrayal of spellbinding political astuteness and exquisite timing. The membership would have voted overwhelmingly to keep her – they’d probably still elect her postmortem – but the MPs were right. She’d lost her judgment and would have gone on to lose the next election as well. Slinging her out in 1990 bought them seven more years of power.
Unfortunately the Labour lot aren’t as good at that sort of thing. I like them more, but they’re rubbish at politics. I reckon they’re proud of it too. They think it shows good character, like not recognising the cast of Made in Chelsea. They probably look down on how the Tories manage to be in power so much more – at how they evaded addressing their division over Europe with a referendum, the aftermath of which has left the Labour party crippled by divisions of its own.
That’s not how Labour does things. The discredited New Labour crypto-Tory notion of spin, that dirty washing is best not done in public, and that compromises can reasonably be made in order to get into office, has been chucked through Angela Eagle’s window. The party’s attempts to have a leadership contest have been so confusing and fractious – so many scrambled new rules about who can vote and how much it costs – you’d think it was the first political party that ever tried to do such a thing. There was barely more fur flying in Westminster when they executed a king.
There’s no agreed system. It’s as if they’re all playing a board game without having finished reading the instructions. “Take 51 nomination cards or you do not pass go.” “Ah, but what if I play my incumbency joker?” “Erm…” It would all be good fun for politics nerds if it weren’t so incredibly urgent. At a pivotal moment in the country’s history, there’s no functioning opposition.
So what’s going to happen in the coming years? How will our major parties align and govern themselves? Fortunately, thanks to the awesome power of guesswork, I can tell you precisely.
Proper Conservatives
When the Tory party acrimoniously split soon after winning a 200-seat majority in 2017’s Snap general election (there was actually plenty of notice, but it was sponsored by the manufacturers of the card game), the right wing of the parliamentary party and the majority of the membership re-formed as the “Proper Conservatives”. “Well, we are the Proper Conservatives and that’s all there is to it. The party of Pitt, the party of Peel, not so much the party of Disraeli if you know what I mean,” announced their first leader just before resigning. The subsequent leadership contest was decided on a system where “every member gets one vote per £1,000 they can prove they’ve owned since before decimalisation”.
The Nasty party
The more liberal Tory remnant took the bold step of embracing irony when choosing a name. “We thought, hey, let’s take that whole ‘Nasty Party’ thing and totally reclaim it, like black people did with n-” explained their first leader just before resigning. The subsequent leadership election was decided thus: candidates first had to obtain the nominations of any 12 gay millionaires, and then the applicant who could express a basic policy of austerity and tax cuts with the most frequent use of the prefix “pro-” was given the job.
The Lib Dems and Steve
The shrunken parliamentary party of the Liberal Democrats took to discussing their political strategy at a discreet branch of Pizza Express not far from Westminster. This was where they met Steve, who was sitting at a nearby table and said he recognised Nick Clegg from Downton Abbey. They all thought Steve was great and bought him a few drinks. Steve explained he didn’t usually bother to vote because “all politicians are wankers”, which went down very well with the self-loathing Lib Dems. Pizza night with Steve became a regular part of their week and they soon hit upon the notion that, whenever they faced a difficult decision, they’d just ask Steve.
New Labour
When the Labour party split in two, the Blairite wing re-adopted the name with which it had once come to power. “We provide very slightly progressive policies that appeal to people who would actually be marginally better off if the Nasty party got in. People who say ‘Yeah, it costs a bit more, but it’s a good feeling.’ Very much like holidaying in Italy,” explained Lord Mandelson, the party’s leader since it lost its last seat in the Commons. He was given the position by dint of his large number of Twitter followers.
Brand New Labour
This new party, with no affiliation to either Labour party, was set up by Russell Brand. Its policies are to achieve world peace and sell hair-care products. Not in that order.
Labour – The Point
“The Point is workers’ rights, The Point is an end to tax breaks for the rich, The Point is freedom from want and tyranny, The Point is a juster world. That’s Labour – The Point” explained the party’s first party political broadcast, voiced by Ray Winstone (“It’s just a gig!”). “We mean to win,” announced leader Jeremy Corbyn. “We now have more than 700,000 members – that’s more members than we actually got votes in the general election. I think that really says something.”
