Day 2401: Mr Balloon wants a Smack

Sunday:


I have intercepted a TEXT MESSAGE from one Conservatory MP to another. It reads: "PODWAS"

Apparently this means "Poor Old Dave; What A Shame" and nowadays it can be heard bleeping around the House of Commons after Mr Balloon puts in one of his "performances".

How DID the Conservatory Party come to disgrace itself like this?

It would be EASY to blame Mr Balloon – that is what all of the Conservatories are doing – and so I WILL.

This is the problem when you promise ALL THINGS to ALL PEOPLE – you end up disappointing EVERYONE.

So, Mr Balloon has succeeded in UNITING the Conservatory Party. Yes, now they are all attacking HIM. From the MODERNISTS, like Mr Ali Miraj, to the TRADITIONAL Thatcher-worshippers like Lord Scraatchi (of the famous PR company Itchi and Scraatchi); from the right wing of the party, like former Conservatory treasurer Lord Kalms-the-Organic-Sleeping-Tablet, to the OTHER[*] right wing of the party, like former member of Mr Balloon's own shadow cabinet Mr Graham Brady-Bunch everybody wants to get Dave.

[*]actually, having two right wings might explain why they keep flapping in circles.


Still, it is not like Mr Balloon could not answer their criticisms:

Mr Miraj said that Mr Balloon was all GIMMICKRY and LACKED SUBSTANCE. Mr Balloon said that Mr Miraj was just sore because he wanted a peerage and Mr B had failed to deliver.

Lord Sleeping-Tablet said that it was CLEARLY TIME FOR A RETHINK. Mr Balloon said that the Lord had NEVER LIKED HIM anyway.

Mr Brady-Bunch said that Mr Balloon was FAILING KEY VOTERS. Mr Balloon said that Mr Brady-Bunch was just WRONG because they HAD made gains in the local elections and anyway he was sulking because he quit the shadow cabinet.

Lord Scraatchi said that Mr Balloon's "NICEY-NICEY POLITICS" was never going to win a general election. But Mr Balloon said, well HE SMELLS!

Yes, Mr Balloon is just FULL of EXCUSES.

Take his sudden crash in the polls – ahh, no, that is because new leaders get a BOUNCE, says Mr Balloon. Why has no one said "ah, ha, Mr Balloon, so you mean that the poll figures that YOU used to get were the BALLOON BOUNCE!"?

And what about the FLOP of "Dave Balloon's Conservatories" in Ealing Southall? Oh, not MY fault, says Mr Balloon – I am a good LOCALIST; it was all the LOCAL Conservatories doings.

Well, the actual local Conservatories seem to think that it was NOT their idea, and might possibly have had something to do with recently DEFENESTRATED Mr Grant Mishapps coming in and bossing them all around.

Sending in a gunboat and telling the locals what to do in NOT localism, Mr Balloon. We call that IMPERIALISM. Even when the gunboat shoots itself and then sinks.


BERATING your own party… or SMEARING them… it's just not very GROWN UP, is it?

These are all symptoms of the SAME problem. Mr Balloon is just not up to the job.

He was never PROPERLY tested in the Conservatory leadership contest. Fluffy Mr Luntz waved his FAIRY MAGIC over Mr Balloon on the Monday, he gave a decent speech on Tuesday, Mr Davis David was zapped with MOGADONS on Wednesday and it was all over before Mr Something of the Night could wave Mr Balloon's manifesto and say "…and here's one I prepared earlier!"

As a PR consultant (admittedly for DOOMED sock-monkey channel ITV digital) Mr Balloon will be familiar with the idea that you have a LIMITED TIME to identify your BRAND. Unfortunately for Mr Balloon, that time may well be UP. And it seems that "Brand" is all the identity that he has.

I am sure it was VERY CLEVER to leave announcing the results of the policy reviews until after Mr Frown came in – not that Mr Frown has a reputation for STEELING other people's policies! – but this has stuck Mr Balloon with the "man with no policies" label for TOO LONG.

It is probably not helping that the policies that his revues and flip-flops HAVE come up with – grammar schools, back to basics, discipline in schools – all sound very FAMILIAR. Not exactly in keeping with his message of "I've changed. We've changed. Try us for a change!" In fact it's all looking like "Small Change"! And that just adds to the message that Mr Balloon is STYLE without SUBSTANCE.


Some people have suggested that Mr Balloon is NOT the Conservatories "Heir to Blairimort" but in fact their version of Mr Kinnock-knock (who's there?) – the lonely prophet who walked them back from the wilderness but never reached the Promised Land of WHITEHALL, flowing with Ministerial Cars and Red Boxes.

This overlooks the fact that the Labour and Mr Kinnock-knock (Joke) went on the journey TOGETHER, and jolly painful it was for them too, but they decided that they had to change. Not all of them liked it very much and some of them (and most of the Conservatories) thought that it was all a bluff. But just look what happened once they were in PARLIAMENT – Lord Blairimort may have had some dicey moments with his rebels, but the MAJORITY of the Labour stuck with him.

The Conservatory Party, on the other fluffy foot, has apparently sent Mr Balloon off into the wilderness ON HIS OWN and expects him not to come back until he has won an election for them. They do not believe that THEY have to change.

And, of course, underneath it all, there remains the doubt that Mr Balloon has REALLY changed either. Under his thin veneer of empty headed vacuousness… perhaps he REALLY IS empty headed and vacuous!

More terrifying still for the Conservatories, the Labour are breeding a NEW GENERATION of clone-robots in their secret VATS, something that the Conservatories never did. Remember how Prime Monster Major-Minor's Cabinet was made up of DEAD WOOD? All the old and tired faces from the Queen Maggie years. Mr Frown's shiny new Cabinet contains a LOT of shiny new faces: ministers like Mr Millipede, Millipede Junior, Mr Balls (formerly Mr Frown's Balls), even Mr Ruth Kelly and wooden Mr Douglas-Fir Alexander, all rising through the ranks – and you know that I do mean RANK – to replace the last lot.

Just to go all Mr ANDY MARR for a moment: the 1992 General Election was a TURNING POINT in British post-war political history! People thought that it might see the end of one of the GREAT NATIONAL PARTIES, the Labour or the Conservatories. They were WRONG. It was the end of BOTH OF THEM!

The result hammered the nails into the coffin of the original Labour and sped the creation of the Conservatory-lite version that has ruled us almost ever since, the ideology that Daddy Alex named Thatcherism-Blairism. But it also sealed the fate of the Conservatory Party too, partly because they finally had to take the blame for the consequences of their actions, but also because it revealed that they had no talent left at all.

PS

When I talk about Mr Balloon and "smack" of course I do NOT mean anything to do with DRUGS and it would be quite wrong to go on about that. Her Majesty's Leader of the Opposition is appealing for DISCIPLINE in schools and he has made it quite clear that anything that HE did in his school days is NOTHING to do with the issue.