WHAT A WEEK! What IS all this leaking out of the Lubyanka? The Politburo has come up with a real corker this time. ‘Josef’ Brown has spotted a flaw in the First-Past-The-Post electoral system: the flaw being he won’t be able to continue as commissar after the morning of May 7th.

No tea & biscuits with HMQ. No squandering of squillions on Guardian social-engineering non-jobs. No wholesale shipping in of Labour-voting Johnny Foreigners from the four corners of the globe to shore up his crumbling base. Oh, no! Our purblind Sprog-of-the-Manse has decreed that whoever comes second in a G. Election should now rule the roost with a bit of input from the Also Ran.

Second plus Third are the new First, it would seem. You have to admire his low-down proletarian chutzpah, don’t you? Well, all I can say is, I only hope he’s got the details thrashed out in time for the 2012 shindig. It would certainly give some zip to the awards ceremonies, that’s for sure. Picture the scene. No sooner has the fastest man on earth stiffened to attention as the opening bars of “The Star Spangled Banner” assault our auditory faculties, than the bronze and silver either side of him whack him in the whatsits & scamper off holding his filched gold medal aloft.

But why stop there? While we’re on the subject of Stalinist re-writes, let’s call in the text books from the local Bog Standards & spruce up our island story PC-wise. The Spanish & French fleets clearly scooped the trophy at Trafalgar, Germany & Japan were the success stories of the last intercontinental dust-up & Roger Bannister did not run the first Four-Minute Mile: those laurels go to the bloke holding the stopwatch & the cameraman from the Northern Echo.

Now I come to think of it, I wouldn’t even be the duly elected Mayor of London, either. No, even as I write these words, the affairs of the Smoke would be in the hands of some slippery Newt-Fancier & a Pink Plod. What a nightmare, eh? Whoaa there! I know what you’re thinking. Well, you can just stop that! As I pertinently quipped on HIGNFY: I’m in charge here!

& Speaking of coming back from the dead, have you seen the latest Sherlock Holmes at the Talkies yet? The one by Mr. ex-Madonna? The one where Lord Blackwood gets his neck stretched then does a Lazarus to seize power, recapture the thirteen colonies & “Fulfil England’s Destiny!” by spreading the benefits of all things British over a grateful planet? If ever there was a rallying cry for putting some oomph back into our flagging election campaign then that was it! In a populist touch, bound to go big with the punters, the first item on Blackwood’s ‘To Do’ List is the selective gassing of unsound MPs in the H of Commons. I was spraying popcorn three rows ahead of me cheering his Lordship on! Mind you, in a plot twist I still can’t get a handle on, said master plan is stuffed by the eponymous consultant detective even as the blameless Lord B gets shuffled off his mortal coil. What is it with lefty scribes of the screen? Political correctness gone mad, or what? Naturally, the party-pooping sleuth had to be played by some yank. A case of enlightened Limey rule being stymied by the Great Satan, yet again! Where have we seen that before, I wonder? Eh, Anthony Eden? Eh, George III?

According to the spiel emanating from the Downing Street Podcast the good times are well & truly back. The bankers have returned their snouts to the trough &, even as I write, are pocketing vast tranches of money printed by the Old Dame of Threadneedle Street & hoofing it to Switzerland to dodge the Darling windfall tax.

Yes, my hearties, it seems that, far from helping the struggling little businessman with a timely loan, those newly minted fivers are being turned into Swiss francs faster than our ex-entrepreneurs can say “Buy the Big Issue!” Ye Gods & little fishes! I hadn’t realised that the whole point of saddling our great-great-grandchildren with debt was to boost cuckoo clock production around the shores of Lake Geneva! Meanwhile, back in Blighty, we are daily faced with the sight of your honest British costermonger vainly begging his flinty-hearted b. manager to lend him the odd monkey to stop him having his two-up-two-down repossessed & his spouse & sprogs forced onto the game.

I tell you truly, it all moistens the manly Johnson eye with tears of outrage.

I mean, it’s all getting a bit Tale of Two Cities, don’t you think? The ancien regime frolics on the lawns of Versailles yelping “Let them snort coke!” while outside the mob starts milling around the Bastille, practising its baying & eyeing the architecture up for some point of easy ingress. Make no mistake, my friends, the electoral tumbrels are rolling towards May 6th. The guillotine blades of popular opinion are being sharpened to the point where the burly executioner can test them with his thumb & go “Ouch!” Oh, yes! If there’s any justice in the world, far sooner than he thinks, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer will find himself well & truly ex-Chequers!

Writing and Cartoons by Guy Carter

What-ho, peasants!
Your Humble Bumbler here. I just thought I’d slope off from my Dick Whittington duties to dip the old quill in squid’s bile & pen a few thoughts about the impending arrival at your doorstep of complete strangers laying claim to the contents of your ballot slip. Yes, my friends. The Election That Never Was is about to become The Election That Has To Happen.

Mind you, strictly entre nous – pardon my French! – all is not tickety-boo at Camp David. Our great von Schlieffen plan to sweep socialism into the sea has not exactly stalled, but there are some nasty knocking sounds coming from under the bonnet.

Take the polls. For you listening to the audio version, I don’t mean the twelve-to-a-bed under-cutters of the honest British plumber. Nor the ones ex-soviet lap-dancers slide their socialist thighs down, either. I mean the ones dreamed up by Mr. Gallup & Mrs. YouGov. At the moment they’re worryingly wobbly. They look like seismographs that can’t make up their minds to flatline or go the full ten on the Richter Scale. By rights the gap between the Toffs’ Party (us) & the Louts’ Party (them) should be gaping. By now we should be, graphwise, Mount Everest to their Mariana Trench. The truth is we’re more like the Sussex Downs to their Norfolk Broads. A bit higher than them, but not so you’d notice.

Then take PMQs. It used to be a weekly treat, settling back into Commons leather to watch the Boy David sling his polished sound-bites over the despatch box straight at the Philistine brow of old Gordoliath. Riveting stuff. But not any more. Some loathsome lefty from the Bullingdon Baiters’ Corporation has clearly been slipping Gordo a stack of slippery one-liners & he’s started returning the Cameron serve with all the aplomb of V. Williams stuffing her sister’s dream of Wimbledon glory.

Don’t get me wrong. Dave’s a sound fellow. I mean to say, you don’t spend your schooldays together wrecking tea shops to the strains of the Eton Boating Song without glimpsing a fellow’s inner steel in extremis. When it comes to dodging airborne currant buns or returning fire with salvoes of jam & clotted cream, then Dave’s your man. But when you go down into the mud with the Marxist, what you need is not just a chap who knows his Machiavelli, but has actually read him in the original Italian. Or was it Latin? Needless to say I’ve mugged up my Gallic Wars, ransacked Sun Tzu’s Art Of War & jotted down a few campaign ideas of my own. I’ve also booked a table for two at a quiet little restaurant where we can talk things over. I think Dave’ll like it. It’s called Granita.

Caricature and writing by Guy Carter