Image above by Martin Gollan

Rishi's Mission

by Stuart McFarlane

Rishi, your mission, should you choose to accept it,
is to win a majority at the next election.
This tape, like the Tories,
will self destruct in 5 seconds.
Your first task will be to assemble a team;
you can flick through the photographs here.
Your second task will be to hold it together
for more than a week.
Your third task will be to reflect on how
you might have have done it all differntly;
how, when and where, it all started to go wrong.
You can't blame yourself entirely,
though you are the man at the top.
True, you were a woeful performer,
wooden, inept and incompetent,
but, really, you were undone by the
spectres of Johnson and Truss;
always there at you shoulder.

The Charge of the Tory Brigade

With apologies to Lord Tennyson

by Stuart McFarlane

Traitors to right of him.
Traitors to left of him.
'What now?' Rishi wondered.
Just another barrage
from Suella, Farage,
and his days were numbered.

The Daily Mail, Express,
still he could not suppress-
hostile headlines thundered!
Might he just be reprieved,
like Mafeking, relieved,
or properly scundered?

His not to reason why,
His but to do and die.
Onward, Rishi, onward!
Rally the back benches-
and out of the trenches,
or ever encumbered!

Threaten deselection?
Call a snap election?
So had others blundered.
And allies he could count
on would not quite amount
to more than a hundred.

Traitors to right of him.
Traitors to left of him.
In the Lords they slumbered.
O, Rishi can't you see
your party soon will be
all utterly sundered!