The government is still reeling from recent events which saw a mob in puritan hats, wielding huge crucifixes and flaming torches, storm the House of Commons during an immigration debate and attempt to burn several Tory ministers to death as witches. “They seemed to be targeting in particular three female MPs – Environment Secretary Therese Coffey, Home Secretary Suella Braverman and former Home Secretary Priti Patel,” says Ivan Gerk, Chief Parliamentary Reporter for the Daily Excess, who witnessed the bizarre events as they unfolded. “One group of them chased Therese Coffey up onto the visitors’ gallery and set her clothes on fire with a blazing torch but, incredibly, despite being on fire from head to foot, she advanced on the guy with the torch, gripped him in her fiery embrace, setting him ablaze too, before tumbling off of the gallery into the government benches below!” As Coffey’s smouldering corpse crashed to the floor of the chamber, sending terrified Tory MPs scurrying for their lives, the main group of attackers were cornering a snarling Suella Braverman near the Speaker’s chair, brandishing crucifixes and torches at her while chanting ‘Burn the witch!’. “What happened next was incredible,” reveals Gerk. “Braverman suddenly rose into the air, spitting abuse at her attackers and firing what looked like thunderbolts at them from her fingers! For a moment, it looked like she had them on the run!” The leader of the mob, however, delivered the coup de grace to the Home Secretary, producing a long bow and hitting her with an arrow, causing her to explode, showering the chamber with burning fragments. “In all the confusion, flames and explosions, Priti Patel was able to escape,” explains the journalist. “According to witnesses, she flew off on a broom!”

Incredibly, despite the fiery demise of two cabinet ministers, police have still made no arrests in relation to these extraordinary events. “A bunch of religious loonies dressed like Vincent Price in Witchfinder General gate crash the House of Commons and burn two ministers to death and the police say they have nothing to go on and no suspects? It beggars belief,” bellows notorious Tory backbencher Mark Porker. “For God’s sake, the leader of these dangerous lunatics has been all over the press claiming responsibility and still the police do nothing!” Indeed, the ‘Reverend’ Hugo Spottisfont, a self-styled clergyman and witch finder, has given several interviews, claiming to have been behind the recent outrage. “This government has become a nest of evil and blasphemy, corrupted by a powerful coven of witches hiding at its heart!” he told the tabloid The Shite. “They have put not just the cabinet, but the entire nation under a spell, so that their daily evil goes unreported in the media and unchallenged by the authorities. But the righteous among us, guided by the light of Our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen through their sorcery and have now struck at the core evil-doers!” The accusations of witchcraft have been rejected by the government, with counter accusations of racism and misogyny being made against Spottisfont and his followers. “I think it speaks volumes that the target of his witch-hunting frenzy were all women and that two of them were from ethnic minorities,” declares Mark Porker. “The agenda here is quite clear – a mistrust and hatred of women, worse, women of colour, in positions of power, particularly in a right of centre government that has no truck with all this hand-wringing, namby pamby woke interpretation of Christianity! Why doesn’t this so-called reverend admit that he intimidated by emancipated women who embrace right-wing extremism?”

Spottisfont has, naturally, rejected these claims, pointing to the observed behaviour of his group’s victims during the incident in the Commons. “How else do you explain the inhuman strength of the Coffey-witch in being able to immolate one of our righteous brothers while on fire herself, if not in terms of being possessed by evil?” he opined in an interview with the Daily Norks. “Braverman – the Queen witch herself – was only destroyed when struck by an arrow containing a sliver of the True Cross upon which Our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. Again, a sure sign of her all-consuming evil. Moreover, didn’t witnesses see the devil Patel fly off on a broomstick? What more evidence is required?” Spottisfont also cited Braverman’s rapid return to the post of Home Secretary only six days after being sacked by then Prime Minister Liz Truss for a security breach, as evidence of her witchcraft. “Clearly, she had cast a powerful spell upon the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak,” he claimed. “He was compelled, against his will, to reappoint her, despite her being manifestly unfit for office!”

Political analyst Pete Halberd also rejects the charges of misogyny and racism being levelled at Spottisfont. “That’s just the standard right-wing rhetoric every time anyone tries to criticise a woman or someone of colour for being a fascist,” he points out. “It is just standard diversionary tactics, trying to ape the left when they defend women and racial minorities by pointing out the actual misogyny and racism underlying most right-wing attacks on such individuals. No, I think the fact is that Spottisfont and his people attacked these Tories because they believed that they were witches.” Not that he believes their characterisation as ‘witches’ should be taken literally. “Clearly, it is an analogy for fascism,” he says. “That’s thing in the UK, with most of our media controlled by wealthy right-wing reactionaries, calling someone a ‘Nazi’ or a ‘Fascist’ has become demonised, even when they are – if you use these words you get dismissed as a ‘woke crank’ or an ‘extreme left-wing revolutionary’ or even an ‘anarchist’. Frankly, accusing them of witchcraft is now considered less offensive and attracts less stigma from the press.”

Whilst agreeing in principle with Spottisfont that the likes of Braverman and Coffey represented evil in its purest form, opposition leader Keir Starmer has moved to distance himself and the Labour Party from the witch hunting group’s actions. “We really can’t support this sort of illegal witch burning,” he said in a press statement. “While the Labour Party agrees that this sort of black sorcery should be stamped out at every opportunity, we also believe that the correct legal procedures must be followed: accuse witches must be tried in a court of law and hanged if guilty – burning is for heretics only.” For his part, Spottisfont has vowed to put allegations of misogyny and racism firmly to bed with his group’s next target. “Next time, we’re going for the warlock Rees-Mogg – you can’t get much whiter than him, plus he’s male, if a bit poncey,” he declared to The Sunday Bystander. “And if people are worried about the legality of it, we’ll even give him a trial – a trial of ordeal in a ducking stool!”