Labour Hails Slight Postponement Of Fuel Duty Hike As Glorious Victory For Communism

The government’s brief suspension of the coming 3% rise in fuel duty proves beyond all doubt that the notorious capitalist running dog, George Osborne, has finally accepted the undeniable truth of revolutionary socialism, jubilant shadow chancellor Ed Balls told a cowed and beaten House of Commons today.

The fleet's lit up! Well, it can afford to now, can't it

“Make no mistake, comrades, this is truly an historic moment in the annals of the revolution,” Mr Balls declaimed exultantly. “When, at long last, even the evil bloated plutocrat Osborne cravenly acknowledges the supreme validity of socialist economics by inserting a six-month pause into the hated fuel escalator inflicted on the downtrodden masses by the vainglorious running dog John Major, the triumph of the working class is complete.”

When asked by reporters afterwards why, during his many years as an economic advisor to Comrade Brown, he had somehow neglected to point out the inherent counter-revolutionary nature of planned rises in fuel duty, Brother Balls solemnly cautioned the press against any further mention of “that non-person”.

Comrade Balls is also understood to be so utterly committed to finalising the long-overdue downfall of the discredited feudal hierarchy that his strange lack of opposition to the tottering elite’s impending downtreading of the young masses, fire-sale of the machinery of state and closure of the people’s hospitals can surely be forgiven, explained his burly commissars.

Unions Urge Labour Party To Cut Disability Costs

Union leaders are continuing to demand action from the Labour Party on the thorny issue of disability cuts, after chronic disability Miliband 2 pointedly refused to discuss his crippling leadership.

Look - he's perfectly capable of doing Mr Cameron's job

“This pitiful waster is costing the Labour movement millions of votes it simply can’t afford to go without,” wailed Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, as the stumbling leader of the opposition lamely chose not to make any reference to unpopular welfare reforms pushed through the House of Lords yesterday during his long self-pitying whine about his own special problems.

Meanwhile, Lord Fraud – who successfully steered the government’s controversial bill through the upper chamber last night by explaining that disabled people were a sub-species of crab and, although there was no evidence for it, it was a scientific fact - chipped in by pointing out that there were many useful jobs which Miliband 2 was perfectly capable of, such as leading the Labour Party to defeat at the next general election.

Public Just Crying Out For Cuts, Says Labour Genius

Vote Labour

Jim Murphy - the shadow defence secretary, for Christ’s sake - has told delighted Guardian readers today that what will make Labour electable again is to realise that what the public wants more than anything is cuts, cuts and more cuts.

“The truth is the Labour Party would have to make cuts if we were in power," he said brightly. “It is difficult to sustain popularity without genuine credibility.

“I really reckon the whole country is with me on this,” he argued. “We’re certainly not going to get any popular support by calling on the government to protect essential services, safeguard people’s jobs or invest in the younger generation. That’s all just stuff and nonsense, as I’m sure the public knows very well.”

Whites Divided Over What To Do With Diane Abbott

Not divisive at all

Controversial MP Diane Abbott - who may or may not be some colour or other - has apparently succeeded in her colonial supremacist plan to divide the white population of Britain, with some saying she should be kicked out of the Labour Party and others meekly apologising for their part in the cruel Victorian domination of the entire Afro-Caribbean world.

“Yay! I rule!” tweeted the non-divisive MP for Hackney North and Stoke.

Following a brutal racist visit from Ed Miliband, however, Ms Abbott later apologised for her latest inflammatory tweet, saying that she could not possibly be expected to communicate using words.

Labour: ‘We Told You The Welfare State Was An Evil Liberal Conspiracy’

Exterminate

Miliband 2, the robot who is apparently the fruition of generations of the hopes and dreams of the working class, is set to announce today that the Labour Party has always maintained that the welfare state was created by twisted Liberal traitor David Lloyd George for the sole purpose of hastening the collapse of the British Empire.

Once plugged in, Mr 2 will tell Britain what it loves to hear - namely that the jobless, the infirm and the elderly dream of nothing but stealing the food out of the very mouths of your starving kids.

“There is no war but class war,” Mr 2 is expected to drone. “That’s you, me and the Tories, united in solidarity against these thieving underclass bastards. How dare they have nothing? How bloody dare they? Let’s take it away from them.”

Craven Labour Conference Delegates Neglecting To Crucify Ed Balls

The beast must die

George Osborne today lambasted rank-and-file Labour Party members for spinelessly failing to instruct their representatives at the party’s annual conference to string up Ed Balls from the nearest lamp post.

“The implosion of the global economy and, with it, the irreversible decline and fall of Western civilisation, can be laid firmly at the door of one man and one man only,” squeaked the chancellor of the exchequer, “And that man is Ed Balls. Kill it. Kill it now, and maybe the gods of finance will be appeased. Or something. It’s got to be worth a try.”

“Of course, I’ll miss our amusing sparring sessions in the Commons, in which he always contrives to make me look a bit of a charlie even though I’m absolutely right about everything,” he smirked. “But it’s a sacrifice I’m sure I shall learn to get used to.”

Labour Tempts Students With Lifetime Of Slightly Less Debt

Miliband 2, the regent of the Labour Party until anyone better comes along, has single-handedly recaptured the youth vote today by dangling the promise of a marginally smaller mountain of crushing debt for future generations of impoverished graduates to defer.

"We're going to get lots of people, talented people, put off from going to university by £9,000 fees,” droned the lesser Miliband, speaking before his party conference begins to address the vexing question of how to differentiate themselves from the other two parties. “But if those fees were slashed to a trifling £6,000 a year, I guarantee they’d be stampeding into higher education.”

Students can barely contain their glee

Miliband 2 went on to dream that his extraordinary munificence would be funded by retaining the current level of corporation tax which his party’s rich corporate friends strenuously avoid paying, and by charging higher interest on the student loans of graduates who stroll into the millions of jobs paying more than £65,000 which exist only in his imagination.

“Let me see now. Under the Conservatives, I’m going to have to hack away an impossible £27,000 debt mountain - not counting the interest - before I could even contemplate a mortgage and kids,” said one sixth-former, who is hoping that a good degree in Engineering might one day swing him a part-time job stacking shelves in a supermarket for £6.50 an hour. “But, under Labour, I’d only have to clear an impossible £18,000? Please excuse my tears of gratitude.”

“This is a truly fantastic deal for students,” smiled utterly independent NUS President and Labour Party member Liam Burns, through gritted teeth. “Vote Labour.”

Darling: Why We Had To Leave The Country In The Hands Of A Raving Lunatic For Three Years

The horse's head was just a friendly hint, said Brown

On the Andrew Marr Plays Guitar Show today, former Chancellor Alistair Darling sensationally revealed the reason why he and David Miliband chose not to topple delusional megalomaniac Gordon Brown when they had the chance.

“At the end point you had say you had to get borrowing down,” explained the traumatised ex-chancellor. “Which is another way of saying: ‘take a sodding great axe to public services, the welfare state, the NHS and all those other things people think are essential’.”

“David Miliband and I met and discussed whether there was any way of getting rid of Gordon, i.e. telling the world about his hour-long ranting fits and his utter pig-headed refusal to recognise an economic disaster even as it came crashing down around his ears,” he revealed. “But then David said to me, ‘Hang on a minute, Snowy - if we punt Gordon into the long grass, then one of us is going to have to fuck the country sideways. Why don’t we just let the Tories do it for us and take all the flak instead? Then we can just shrug and say it was all Gordon’s fault, and coast back into power when the plebs give them the boot in four years’ time?’ So there you have it. It was all Gordon’s fault and nobody else’s, and if he even thought I was looking like I might spill the beans, the psychotic maniac would undoubtedly have kicked my teeth in and handed them back to me as cufflinks. Or told his devoted henchman, Balls, to do it.”

“Vote Labour in 2013, folks,” he added hopefully.

Miliband Boldly Places Labour Party In New ‘Soft Centre’ Of Politics

Ed Miliband, the boy who won the Labour Party in a raffle, today vowed to steer his party into a new ‘soft centre’ of British politics, after millionaire playboy and erstwhile jobbing prime minister Tony Blair took time out from counting his income from two global bank directorships to urge the party not to lurch to the left.

It looks like a nipple - it must be Miliband

To the guitar accompaniment of Andrew Marr playing ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’, Mr Miliband told viewers: “I've had conversations in private which have been good conversations with Tony Blair, with him patting me on the head and giving me a shiny new 50p coin, but let me just say this - it all depends on where you think the centre ground is. Some barmy old folks like Mr Marshall-Andrews and Mr Skinner keep insisting that the left is on one side of the centre and the right is on the other, but that’s a very simplistic way of looking at things.”

“No, the truth is that hundreds of Conservatives are on one side of the government and a few dozen Liberal Democrats are on the other,” he sang. “So the hard centre of politics is obviously somewhere almost exactly in the middle of the Conservatives. But I don’t want anyone to think that supporting Labour is hard, because it’s not. Well, I’m not. Ask anyone in the shadow cabinet, and they’ll tell you I’m incredibly soft. In fact they’re often urging me to take my leadership style even further, by telling me I must be soft in the head. And I’m open enough to take that on board, thank them for their advice and work on it.”

Speculation is rife as to which soft centre best describes the Labour Party under Mr Miliband, with opinions divided sharply between the coffee crème which nobody wants and the vanilla fudge.

Labour Has Lost Touch With The Papers, Admits Miliband

Whatever they say, that's public opinion

In a frank acknowledgement of defeat at the polls last year, Labour leader Ed Miliband told activists at a policy forum that his party became sadly out of touch with the very people whose opinions matter most - namely press barons Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rothermere, Richard Desmond and the Barclay brothers.

“We went from six people making decisions in a smoke-filled committee room to six people making the decisions from a sofa in Whitehall, which proves that a) the cabinet doesn’t really matter very much, b) we were observing the smoking ban and c) Whitehall has some pretty impressive sofas,” droned Mr Miliband. "But the papers were trying to tell us what their owners wanted us to say. They were telling us that each and every one of the country’s woes can be firmly laid at the door of bastard immigrants and filthy rich dolescum. We didn’t listen to their deafening silence on corporate tax evasion and the insatiable demands of capitalism.”

Mr Miliband is keen to remove the tiresome clause in Labour’s constitution that allows unreformed socialists like Dennis Skinner any say in the composition of the shadow cabinet.

"I want us to be an alternative government," he said. "Exactly like the current government, in fact, only with a different logo. And the only way to achieve that is to have all the shadow cabinet dutifully chanting whatever the Sun says.”

“Immigrants out! Kick the sick! Bring back the workhouse!” he added, in the hope that one of his speeches might finally make front-page headlines. “Labour makes you free!”

Just Carry On Working, They Won’t Be Expecting That - Balls

Balls, the shadow chancellor, has solemnly warned the unions not to strike over swingeing attacks on employment rights it took generations to win, as they would be falling into the trap of doing exactly what the Tories would expect.

Balls

“We in the Labour Party know exactly how the Tories think, because we spent 13 years practicing,” Balls pointed out. “George Osborne’s tactic is a classic Tory ploy – mount an all-out assault on workers’ rights until they strike, then blame the strikers for everything bad that has ever happened.”

“The only way the unions can avoid this self-defeating outcome is to roll over and passively submit to every government attack,” he advised. “That’s the very last thing the Tories would expect, and they simply have no effective answer to that. They’ll just keep blindly cutting pay, stealing pensions and removing workplace rights willy-nilly - and all the time the unions will be smiling serenely, which will really give them something to worry about.”

“I would say the best course of action the unions could take to throw the Tories into disarray would be to abolish themselves completely,” added Balls, “But I’ve just seen some of the printers’ bills for the leaflets we stuffed into letterboxes for the local elections, and they’re not going to pay themselves.”

Disenfranchised Millions Tell Miliband: ‘No, We’re Over Here’

Mr Miliband shows his followers (if any) the Right way

Ed Miliband - who leads the Labour Party, apparently - has announced that the reason his party was voted out of power was a popular misconception that they were in some way interested in the plight of the poor, and vowed to take his party into new realms of mean-spiritedness somewhere to the right of the Conservatives in his mission to reconnect with the electorate.

“Labour must be a party that rewards contribution, not worklessness,” said a straight-faced Mr Miliband, whose predecessors ennobled party donors such as Lord Sainsbury, Lord Sugar, Lord Joffe, Lord Gavron, Lord Bernstein, Lord Bhattacharyya, Lord Edmiston and Lord Noon whilst appointing Atos to deprive the disabled of their benefits.

“I have made a careful study of the new political landscape of modern Britain by reading the Sun for a week,” he went on, “And it seems clear to me that millions of decent, hardworking families have stopped voting because no political party represents their hopes and dreams of bringing back the workhouse, press-ganging the feckless into the armed forces and reducing cripples to begging in the streets.”

Meanwhile, people walking through Highgate cemetery have reported strange whirring noises coming from the grave of Mr Miliband’s late father Ralph, the noted left-wing academic.

Bomb Explodes Harmlessly, Causing Only Minor Damage To Balls

A bombshell that was meant to assassinate Tony Hitblair six years ago exploded harmlessly in the Daily Telegraph this morning, causing only superficial harm to one-eyed chief conspirator Gordon von Stauffenbrown’s Balls.

According to the Telegraph’s forensic experts, the bomb plot appears to have been hatched in the dark days of 2005 when an increasingly deranged Hitblair cynically reneged on his promise to step down, which he famously scribbled on a restaurant menu long cherished by Stauffenbrown. As Hitblair, buoyed by the continuing support of the British hordes in their mighty Volvo tanks, continued to ignore the promise - no matter how hopefully Stauffenbrown brandished it before the world’s press - a desperate plot was hatched to blow Hitblair out of office.

Labour has only got one Balls

Unfortunately for the plotters, the bomb turned out to be a complete dud and Hitblair survived unharmed until he chose to end his own reign just before the chaotic last days of the Labour government, defiantly bringing ruin to the nation by appointing the hapless Stauffenbrown as his successor.

The bomb was soon forgotten – until yesterday, when it unexpectedly went off with a disappointing pop in an old newspaper. An embarrassed Stauffenbrown emerged from the smoke with his trousers in tatters and his blackened Balls dangling in full view of everyone.

“My reputation is undamaged,” he assured reporters, “Because I haven’t got one.”

Miliband: ‘Knew Labour Could Recapture Middle Earth’

Mr Miliband is targeting the Shire vote

Launching a major review of Labour policy, Ed Miliband has declared his bold intention to retake the fictional realm of Middle Earth from the combined orc forces of David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

“I say we’ve got to move beyond New Labour,” Mr Miliband told his party’s National Policy Forum. “Why do I say we have to move beyond New Labour? Not because the New Labour approach was wrong, it was right in many ways, but because people are sick of hearing about New Labour. So let’s hear no talk of New Labour. We shall banish New Labour from our thoughts. Let us hear no more of New Labour.”

“Right, that’s enough about New Labour,” he went on cheerfully. “With New Labour out of the picture, we need to find some new Labour policies which don’t sound like Tory or LibDem policies, but which will resonate with the people in Middlemarch – because, let’s face it, they’re the only ones who can be bothered to vote.”

“So let’s get our brand new Labour thinking caps on and ask ourselves how we can reconnect with the squeezed middle-of-the-road,” he urged. “The next election is ours for the taking, if we can just get Jayne Middlemiss on board. Our message must be entirely new: “Labour has your best interests at heart, piggy in the middle.’ If you thought you knew Labour, take another look – because we’re all-new Labour here.”

‘Whoops,’ Say Labour MPs After Missing Chance To Vote Down Spending Review

The small number of coalition MPs present in the House of Commons today feared an embarrassing defeat when they realised that the Labour opposition had issued a three-line whip to its MPs, demanding their full attendance at the debate on the Comprehensive Spending Review – but breathed again when the deeply unpopular package was safely talked out of time at 6pm without a single Labour politician realising they could defeat it simply by asking the Speaker for a closure motion calling for a vote which they would certainly have won, with so many empty seats on the government benches.

“Sorry, I’m a bit new to this,” admitted Ed Miliband’s new chief whip appointee, Rosie Winterton. “Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.”

Rosie Winterton may not have a clue about how parliament works, but on the plus side she can spot a mirror at 500 metres

Experienced but red-faced Labour MPs have so far remained in their seats, and look set to remain there for some time rather than face grinning parliamentary journalists in the lobby.

“Look, you can’t expect busy Labour MPs to waste their precious time familiarising themselves with the standing orders of the place they are paid £65,738 a year plus expenses to work in – or, for that matter, thinking about anything in particular apart from what to wear when it’s their turn to appear on Question Time,” explained one former parliamentarian. “That’s what you appoint a camera-friendly muppet with a vacant smile full of superb cosmetic dentistry to the post of chief whip for.”

Alan Johnson Now Fully Conversant With ‘%’ Button

Newly-appointed shadow chancellor Alan Johnson announced today that he is now fully conversant with all of the functions on a basic calculator, including the difficult ‘%’ button, and expressed the hope that Treasury officials will allow him to start learning how to use a big scientific model on Monday.

Mr Milburn says a 10-digit calculator will be much better for getting to grips with the economy

“Mr Miliband says he’s very pleased with my progress,” beamed Mr Johnson, “Especially when this time last week I didn’t have the foggiest idea what an economic was, coming from a trade union background and that.”

The former postman amazed reporters with his grasp of numbers, explaining that you can add, subtract, divide and multiply them as many times as you want to make new ones. The pinnacle of his press conference was Mr Johnson’s slow but determined demonstration of compound interest.

“Apparently you can work it out backwards, too,” he assured hacks, “But my advisors assure me that’s just like really geeky and nobody’s ever found a use for it.”

“What I want now is a really, really good scientific calculator,” he added. “That posh Mr Balls and his wife, Mrs Balls, invited me round to dinner last night and - over a hoity-toity entrée of raw puffer fish and crisps they said they made especially for me - they showed me their really nice one. It’s a Sharp, with a line playback feature in case you get lost in particularly hard sums, and two stats modes – I suppose that’s for if you don’t like the answer you get from one mode, you might get a better one from the other. I like that. I’m going to ask Mr Miliband to get me one.”

“And it’s got a brilliant slidey cover, too, with a slot for a crib sheet,” he added. “So when I stand up in parliament with my shiny new calculator, I bet I can make that smarmy nerd George Osborne look really stupid with that. Or, if I’m like really bored, I can have fun trying to put it on back to front.”

“Excuse me, but I feel just a teeny-weeny bit sick,” he concluded. “When I come back from the bathroom, let me tell you about my really clever idea - which I worked out all by myself - that I can prove the damage the government’s cuts will cause, using something called a cosine.”

80s Revival Begins With Interminable Kinnock Speech

Veteran party members remember Lord Kinnock's oratory well

Those bad old days which new Labour leader Ed Miliband faithfully promised would not return returned in full today, as an invigorated Neil Kinnock mounted the platform at a Tribune rally and launched into a speech which seasoned political observers say may not end until the next Labour government falls.

Lord Kinnock began by saying he could never praise Mr Miliband enough and then went on to prove it by droning his way through a thesaurus for four hours, before temporarily veering off at a tangent to tell dewy-eyed activists: “We’ve got our party back,” “The party which, at a particular point in time belonged to us, but then didn’t belong to us for a considerable period of time, is now hello, hello it’s good to be back, good to be back in our hands again,” “We, who had a party taken from us, are now finally at last back in total, utter and complete possession of the self-same aforesaid party once more for a second time now, isn’t it,” “What it is, you see, is those of us who think, feel and particularly those who think we feel that we lost the party which appertained to us - both collectively and on a personal basis - can now be said to be in full, frank and frankly full agreement that this present party which we now have is indeed the self-same party, to all practical intents and purposes, not to mention intense practical purposes – minor differences notwithstanding - that we previously had both heretofore and previously at that time which was then,” and many other horribly life-draining variations on the same tedious theme.

After three hours of this, Mr Kinnock returned to his effulgent praise of Ed Miliband’s two-day captaincy of the Labour movement, repeating his previous comments again but this time in Welsh.

While veteran left-wingers settled down in the sleeping bags for a long haul, some younger party members on the fringes of the meeting were seen furtively casting around for suitably heavy objects with good aerodynamic properties.

“Kill me,” begged a distraught Ed Balls to a rapt reporter from the Daily Mirror, as he clawed his bleeding ears. “Kill me now.”

Labour Party On Miliband Suicide Watch

Mr Miliband's expression hasn't changed for hours

The Labour Party and the press were today mounting a 24-hour suicide watch on David Miliband, amid mounting concern that his failure to secure the party leadership may tip him over the brink and send him spiralling into a bottomless pit of depression.

Fears rose after his keynote speech to conference, which saw a broken man shamble listlessly to the podium, staring fixedly at his feet - only to mutter, “I’m fine,” repeatedly until a sympathetic Harriet Harman put a motherly arm around Mr Miliband’s heaving shoulders and walked him offstage.

“Sibling rivalry can cause terrible pressure to succeed and, sadly, David is still in the denial stage,” warned a delegate from the Royal College of Stress Counsellors. “It’s a bitter blow when, one fateful day, you suddenly realise that the irritating little squirt who kept losing your favourite bits of Lego has in fact left you way behind, turning all your years of hard work into a futile waste of your entire life. It would help enormously in his struggle to move on if he’d stop mechanically mouthing platitudes he doesn’t mean and admit that, in his heart of hearts, he desperately needs to see this brother who apparently has everything fall down the nearest manhole.”

Britain’s media are also desperately concerned about Mr Miliband’s mood, with the Times thoughtfully suggesting ten top ways he could top himself and the Telegraph running a sweepstake on which day he will try to check out of this cruel world.

Ed Miliband’s Inspired Leadership Speech In Full:

“Here I come, walkin' down the street. I get the funniest looks from every one I meet. Hey, hey, I’m a newbie, and people say I monkey around. But I’m too busy singing to put anybody down. I go wherever I want to, do what I like to do. I don't have time to get restless, there's always something new.

“Hey, hey, I’m a newbie, and people say I monkey around. But I’m too busy singing
to put anybody down. I’m just trying to be friendly. Come and watch me sing and play. I’m the young generation, and I’ve got something to say.

“Any time or anywhere, just look over your shoulder - guess who'll be standing there?

“Hey, hey, we're the newbies, and people say we monkey around. But we're too busy singing to put anybody down. We're just tryin' to be friendly. Come and watch us sing and play. We're the young generation, and we've got something to say.

“Hey, hey, we're the newbies. You never know where we'll be found. So you'd better get ready. We may be coming to your town*.”

Screaming applause, fainting girls, mandatory three-hour standing ovation etc.

* subject to industrial action by the RMT

(with apologies to Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart)

Miliband Becomes Transcendant Manifestation Of The Sum Of All Hopes And Fears

Newly-elected Labour leader Miliband Two ceased to exist as a physical being of flesh and blood this morning, as the Sunday papers flopped through the letter-boxes of the nation, and transcended to a state of pure thought comprised of the sum total of hopes and fears projected onto him by the nation’s editorial writers and therefore, by extrapolation, the entire British public.

Mr Miliband is now capable of radiating confidence beyond the visible spectrum

Humbled party conference delegates who witnessed the transformation state that he became suffused with a shimmering light as he ascended to the podium, which seemed to touch all present with rainbow-hued shafts of pure love before a column of blinding brilliance burst through the ceiling directly above him. As the party faithful rubbed their eyes, they saw to their amazement that Mr Miliband’s body had vanished, to be replaced by a floating translucence crackling with blue sparks.

As they fell to their knees in adoration, they each felt, rather than heard, a voice telling them, “Thank you for your first and second preferences. Now all that earthbound carpetbagging for the union vote has passed safely beyond the temporal veil, it is appropriate to say that…”

Those privileged to be present at the transmogrification disagree on what the otherworldly being said next, however.

Elderly delegates and hacks in the employ of Rupert Murdoch both insist that the being promised a full return to the founding socialist principles of the Labour movement, while younger activists raised in the era of New Labour – together with reporters from the Independent and the Observer - feel certain that it promised there would be no return to the failed policies of the hard left, but a new era of constructive centrist dialogue with the wealth creators.

All, however, agreed that their new spirit guide concluded its telepathic transmission by pledging to work towards the transformation of tragically-unmetamorphosed sibling Miliband One before thanking them deeply, on behalf of the whole ethereal realm, for telling the irredeemable John Prescott where he could stick his dreams of playing Monopoly with the party funds.