LABOURING UNDER A DELUSION! (weekly poem)

LABOURING UNDER A DELUSION!

14/9/2015: Jeremy Corbyn has appointed the ‘extreme

left-winger’, John McDonnell, as Shadow Chancellor--

who claims that the economy will be safe in his hands.

The workers of this kingdom have,

Lost their indifferent phlegm;

And chosen Jez to lead them to,

The new Jerusalem.

A re-run of State Ownership,

At Attlee’s Number Ten; (1)

When beer and sandwiches flowed free,

A toilers mise en scéne!

But Labour suffered labour pains,

From a rape pregnancy;

And was delivered of a freak,

By breech delivery.

The ‘New’ mutation thus was born,

A triplet afterbirth;

Called Blair and Brown and Mandelson,

Who smirked for all their worth!

And when ‘New Labour’ sidled forth,

It dined on Easy Street;

And hobnobbed with the Banker Boys,

And the odd City cheat.

It hedged its bets with Wapping and, (2)

The whole of the Square Mile;

And hung-out with those of high rank,

But not the rank-and-file. 

But now that Jez is the big cheese,

Will everything be fine?

And will the proletariat,

Agree to toe the line?

For hasn’t John McDonnell claimed,

To all the party’s strands;

The capitalist economy,

Is safe in Labour’s hands?

(1) Clement Attlee: Labour’s first post-war P.M.

who introduced wide-spread Nationalisation.

(2) The Murdoch Press.

© Richard Layton