The Spin Doctor’s Lament

 

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.’