Out of Their Minds

“It’s all gone horribly wrong! This should have been our masterstroke, resulting in the Tories being slaughtered in the polls, but instead we’re the ones looking like fools and they’re gaining support!” admits Labour Party strategist Gerry Clapphouse, as he tries to explain to the press the bizarre headgear recently sported by Labour leader Ed Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls. “To be frank, those tinfoil hats probably represent our best chance of saving the party from disaster!” According to Clapphouse the two top opposition politicians’ recent disastrous policy initiatives – in which, to the ire of supporters and trade unions, they appeared to endorse the government’s already discredited economic policies – were the result of an audacious experiment gone wrong. “It was clear to us that Cameron was somehow reading our minds, sucking our best policy ideas out of our heads and then passing them off as his own!” explains Clapphouse, pointing to such policy initiatives as the new HS2 high speed rail link, quantitative easing and academy schools. “If not Cameron himself, then someone close to him on the government front bench – that Ian Duncan Smith, perhaps, he looks like one of those brainiac weirdos you see in comic strips, with that great shiny chrome dome of his!” Whoever the Tories mind robber was, an inner circle of Labour strategists determined that the only defence would be to fight fire with fire.

“Of course, it was a hard sell to the leadership – at first most of the Labour front bench tried to dismiss our ideas as fantastical nonsense,” recalls Clapphouse. “But they began to change their tune when we revealed to them that a back bench Labour MP claimed to have had some success in malicious though-transference.” The MP – Barney Wacklinger – had apparently succeeded in beaming ‘gay thoughts’ into Foreign Secretray William Hague’s head, leaving him sexually confused. “It nearly forced his resignation, with all that business about him sharing a hotel room with his young male researcher,” gloats the strategist. “It completely undermined his effectiveness as Foreign Secretary. Damn it, he became so insecure about his sexuality that he had to start bombing Libya to prove his manhood!” Unfortunately, the effort of projecting these thoughts into Hague’s mind took a terrible toll on Wacklinger, unbalancing his own mind and resulting in his sectioning under the Mental Health Act. Consequently, it was decided to adopt a more passive approach. “It seemed so straightforward – we just needed to come up with the worst possible policy initiatives, guaranteed to turn the electorate against anyone who tried to implement them, then get the front bench to push them to the forefront of their minds whenever they were in the Commons, where Cameron could steal them from their heads to make his own!” reveals Clapphouse. “There we were, preparing to gloat as they crashed and burned at the polls, and what bloody happened? The bastards succeeded in selling the policies to the public!.”

Amongst the toxic initiatives Cameron has turned into apparent vote-winners include the capping of benefit payments to the most needy families and, most controversially, the ‘Punch a Pensioner’ policy, which legalises the assault and mugging of senior citizens for their pensions. “Would you credit it? That smarmy public school bastard has succeeded in convincing the public that the recession is all down to the supposedly excessive pensions being enjoyed by old people and that the best way to promote growth is to steal their money!” sighs an exasperated Clapphouse. “We were sure that one alone would destroy him in the polls as soon as he announced it!” But worse was to come for the Labour thought transfer experiment, when senior party figures suddenly finding themselves expressing opinions and espousing policies which were not their own. “It was terrifying! Somehow Cameron turned the tables on us and managed to beam his evil economic concepts into our minds!” says Clapphouse. “All of a sudden Ed Miliband and Ed Balls found themselves conceding economic victory to the government – unfortunately, they couldn’t manage to sell such a crock of shit to our supporters!”

Miliband himself was aghast at what happened. “I couldn’t believe what I heard coming out of my mouth! Honestly, I had no intention whatsoever of saying those things! I really don’t think that there’s no alternative to spending cuts!” he allegedly later told a meeting of the shadow cabinet. “Really, I wanted to say that we’d re-nationalise the railways, guarantee a living wage, build schools and hospitals and create jobs, but these other thoughts just pushed themselves into my mind! I was powerless to say anything else! Still, it’s too late to try and go back on what I said now! It will just make things worse – I’ll look completely indecisive!” Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls described a similar experience, telling colleagues of the horrible feeling of alien thoughts insinuating themselves into his head. “It was horrible – I felt violated,” he apparently sobbed. “It was as if a terrible darkness was seeping into my mind, accompanied by a sinister and overwhelming smugness and sense of entitlement – it couldn’t have been anyone else other than that bastard Cameron invading my brain!”

Rejecting allegations that these bizarre claims are simply an attempt to cover up a spectacular misjudgement on the part of Labour’s leadership, Clapphouse maintains that the Prime Minister is behind the policy disaster. “He’s clearly well-versed in the Dark Arts – just look at the way he has apparently cast a spell over the electorate, blinding them to the truth! Indeed, I’ve heard rumours that he has studied at the feet of some of the occult masters. Like Paul Daniels,” he says. “Next thing you know, he’ll be making the deficit disappear – as if by magic!” However, others in the party disagree with Clapphouse’s analysis. “The only Dark Art that oily bastard is a master of is Public Relations. He’s well-versed in selling crap to people,” opines veteran Labour backbencher Jack Kretch. “That’s the only so-called ‘secret’ to his success – like all PR men he simply plays on a combination of people’s ignorance and basest desires to persuade them that acting in their own worst interest is actually a brilliant idea. If you serve shit with a smile, people will believe it is ice cream and eat it!” Clapphouse, meanwhile, is pinning his hopes on the tinfoil hats, insisting that the party’s front bench wear them at all times in the Commons. “It’s the only way we can keep him out of our heads,” he declares. “According to some of the web sites I’ve visited, the design we’re using is guaranteed to block all forms of thought control, voodoo radio transmissions, high frequency brain washing and alien mind intrusions!”