The Tories’ general election campaign yesterday took a bizarre twist when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was pictured brawling with Santa Claus outside Newcastle’s Eldon Square shopping centre. While initial media reports, based on briefings from senior Tory sources, claimed that Johnson had come out on top – with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg stating that he had given the Santa a ‘bloody good pasting’ – mobile phone footage to the contrary, taken by a bystander, has subsequently emerged. In the video, the Tory leader is seen being knocked to the ground by the enraged Father Christmas, before being repeatedly beaten with a sackful of presents, as he pleads for mercy. The contretemps is believed to have started after Johnson, on the campaign trail, paid a visit to the shopping mall’s Christmas Grotto. “It was bloody bizarre, I can tell you,” Gary Twannock, who claims to have been the Santa on duty, told a local newspaper this evening. “It had been a bit quiet like, up until then, with most of the kiddies still at school, then this great tub of lard comes in and sits on me knee! He was such a fat bastard I thought he was going to bust me legs! I told him to bugger off, but he wouldn’t budge.”

According to Twannock, Johnson then proceeded to reel off his Christmas ‘wish list’. “He was mumbling and prattling on about how he wanted a Parliamentary majority, a no deal Brexit, tax cuts for the rich and the courts emasculated,” says the thirty nine year old Geordie. “He said that if I didn’t deliver it all, then I was going to find it very difficult when it came to entering the UK in my sled in future, implying that my immigration status might be under threat. I mean, the bloke was clearly off his trolley.” With the aid of his elves and a couple of security guards, Twannock claims to have finally ejected Johnson from the Grotto. It wasn’t at this point, however, that things really kicked off. “I went for my lunch after that,” explains Twannock. “When I got back to me Grotto, I found the bastard had taken my bloody place! There he was, wearing one of my spare red jackets, a Santa hat and sporting the scruffiest looking fake beard I’d ever seen, trying to indoctrinate the kiddies!” To his horror, Twannock also saw that the rogue Prime Minister had installed Environment Secretary Michael Gove as his elf. “The smarmy bastard was sat there, cross legged, in green tights,” he recalls. “He must have brought his own costume as we deffo didn’t have one in his size.”

Twannock alleges that the Tory leaser was attempting to indoctrinate the children under cover of the persona of the much beloved seasonal icon. “He was telling them that they’d get everything they wished for if the persuaded their parents to help him ‘Get Brexit Done’ – if they didn’t, they’d just get a stocking full of shit instead,” a still shocked Twannock, who has been Santa in a variety of stores and shopping centres for the past eight years, recalls. “It was bloody outrageous! An absolute abuse of the sacred bond of trust between kiddies and Santa! The man is obviously a moral degenerate! I saw red, I can tell you – I punched him in the face!” An enraged Twannock followed this up by dragging the fake Santa from the Grotto and ejecting him from the Shopping Centre, before continuing his assault. “Obviously, I didn’t want to upset the kiddies too much, by having them see Santa beat up the Prime Minister,” he explains. “So I thought it best to take it outside.” The confrontation quickly escalated as several of Santa’s elves waded in to kick Johnson in the genitals, before the Tory leader was eventually dragged away by his security detail. “I noticed that bloody Michael Gove didn’t come to his leader’s aid,” claimed Twannock. “The little weasel tried hiding under my sled in the Grotto, but the elves pulled out and gave him a good kicking.”

Twannock has denied that his actions were in any way politically motivated, despite Tory accusations that he was a Labour activist who had himself trying to indoctrinate children by handing out gift wrapped copies of the Labour manifesto in his Grotto. “Look, I’m not political like,” he told his local newspaper. “I don’t particularly like that Jeremy Corbyn – he seems like the type of bloke who goes around telling kiddies that Santa isn’t real, that he’s just an invention of the capitalist exploiters, like. But at least he isn’t trying to steal the whole concept of Christmas for his own political purposes, like that bastard Johnson.” The whole incident has left the Tory Party on the back foot, coming, as it does, hard on the heels of leaked papers which appear to show them pursuing a secret anti-Christmas agenda. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has claimed that the papers show the government planning to restrict access to Christmas if re-elected, allowing only those who can afford the festivities to enjoy it. “Benefits claimants and the low paid will be banned from having Christmas,” he told an election rally in Epsom. “Those in work will be forced to work the entire festive period while the fat cat bosses celebrate.”

The Tory Party has subsequently issued a statement denying the veracity of the papers and condemning Santa, describing him as an obvious left-wing activist. “Just look at the way he dresses in red,” a spokesperson claimed. “Not to mention the fact that he is forever pushing his socialist agenda on to innocent young children, convincing them that it is possible to get something for nothing every Christmas. Worse still is his obvious socialist propaganda on the redistribution of wealth through present giving. The bastard.” Denying charges that they themselves were spreading crude propaganda based entirely on unsubstantiated lies and smears, the Tory spokesperson added that voters should be ware that when Jeremy Corbyn had burned down the Reichstag and blamed the Jews, he had been assisted by Santa Claus.