Death and Glory

"We have moved from a one nation to a no nation party, thanks to Gordon. We are unelectable everywhere, and that is untenable." - Anonymous former Labour minister

"Governments in richer countries use the excuse of democracy to claim it is "politically impossible" to make bigger cuts" - Yang Fuqiang, WWF China

"There is but one freedom, to put oneself right with death. After that everything is possible." - Albert Camus



The time has come, Gordon, to consider your situation. The Bolivian army is at the door, you've only a few rounds left, and Australia is a long, long way away.

The sad truth of it is that the only way for you to avoid a swift and brutal death at the hands of the electorate would be to bring Princess Di herself back from the grave. Not only Mr. Cameron, but a sizable portion of his shadow cabinet as well would need to be exposed as perennial buggerers of marsupials before people would even begin to entertain the idea of voting anything other than Tory.

Don't get me wrong here, Gordon, I've always rather liked you. I'm at a loss to explain how the English fetishism of the underdog seems to have made a special exception in your case. Perhaps a passive-aggressive swipe at your Caledonian roots, perhaps?

Underneath the forced smiles and the stapler-hurling, there has been that shimmering vestige of a deeply serious, moral human being in there, looking for a vent. Where Tony was quite comfortable warping his ideals to his ambitions, the internal conflict between what you know you should do, and what you feel you ought to be seen to be doing.

Now, you could prolong the agony, sweating through interviews and shredding your fingernails ever closer to the bone until we boot you out. Or you could dispense with this fantasy now, and accept that far too much blood has now passed under the bridge for you - or your party - to remain in parliament for very much longer.

Just think of the release this could bring - no more listening to focus groups or advisers, no more desperate horse-trading to hold your cabinet together, no more desperate attempts to play the great man. Scowl away. Pepper prime-minister's question time with long and incomprehensible economic formulae. Tell David Cameron exactly what you think of him.

And floating free from your political chains, you could do worse than take a lesson or two from Dubya, of all people. Concerned that his successor might actually start listening to all this flim-flam on global warming and the environment, Bush's people passed a raft of so-called "Midnight Regulations" which the current regime are still in the process of trying to unravel.

Now, there's no point in trying to scupper the Tories' plans because, let's face it, they don't have any. No, you need to aim your sights much higher. Let's take climate change as an example. You've always wanted to make a difference, but you're worried that anything too radical might come back to bite you in the arse at the polls. Not anymore! Impose punitive emissions taxes, cover East Anglia in solar panels, force us all to start driving golf buggies, anything you want!

The only people you really need to convince are your own party. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of disgruntled, desperate backbenchers would be more than happy to pin their colours to a madcap, attention-grabbing enterprise like this. It'd certainly be a more interesting diversion for them than sniping away at every half-baked cabinet attempt to keep voters happy that they can get their fangs into.

So hang the party, hang the opposition, and hang the voters. Turn Britain into the world's leading light on climate change (or anything else, for that matter). Shame the Americans, hush the Chinese, even trigger a wave of copycat responses across the globe. As you hand in the keys to Downing St., you can retire into well-earned obscurity satisfied in the knowledge that you've just saved the planet. Hurrah!

Easy.