The Spin-Doctor’s Lament
Would that Keir Starmer were more of a charmer:
a dab hand at the glad hand like Barack Obama.
For politics are tough and it’s just not enough
to set out your stall for the tumbled Red Wall
as a principled chap who shrinks from the crap.
Those recently Blue care nothing for you
nor the desperate poor slumped on the floor,
in cardboard cities that no one pities
nor the migrant boats that contain no votes:
‘This is England, mate, where it’s simply too late
to raise the red flag or the spectre of Mag;
we’re the much-courted middle, not Waitrose but Lidl.
To the son of a toolmaker we prefer a wiseacre
whose path was beaten through prep school and Eton
and later the fogeyish groves of The Spectator;
he’s the man for our times and his putative crimes
put nobody off: so give us a toff
any day of the week to a well-meaning geek.’