Congratulations to Vlad Putin on his knife-edge election victory – and my deep gratitude to him for pointing out the fatal flaws in Western democracy.
Fair enough, not a single Western country can these days boast either a turnout of 77 per cent or a victor with 87 per cent of the vote. Speaking of the latter, I commend Vlad for his modesty and stoic self-restraint. He agreed to settle for a knife-edge 87 per cent even though he could easily have demanded – and received! – 100 per cent or more.
Stalin, for example, often polled 105 per cent in some constituencies. In fact, Putin’s modesty was only ever outdone by Hitler. After winning the 1933 election, Adolf manfully resisted the temptation to hold another one, no doubt wishing to avoid the embarrassment of popular enthusiasm to the tune of 100 per cent of the vote.
But what attracts me most about Putin’s victory is the implicit lesson it has taught our own Tory Party. The Tories should heed the message, what with their own electoral chances currently bringing to mind words like ‘snowball’ and ‘hell’.
However, there is still time to turn things around, and Vlad shows how. After all, a party that has already been in power for 14 years must have been able to grease many proven mechanisms of power. That experience should inspire the campaign slogan to be inscribed on blue Tory banners: “We know where you live.”
Admittedly, there seems to be little the Tories can do to improve their performance in government. The economy, defence, NHS, education, taxation and so forth are all drops in the puddle of spilled milk, and Rishi must be realistic enough to recognise this.
Yet any political consultant worth his salt would tell him to stop shedding tears over that puddle. Instead he should concentrate on the positives, Vlad-style. And Vlad teaches the ultimate lesson of political campaigning: the best opposition is no opposition.
Since, as Vlad explained, we have no democracy anyway, Rishi shouldn’t feel constrained by traditional British niceties. He is still PM, isn’t he? Of course, he is. That puts him in control of the armed forces (including SAS), police, intelligence (MI6) and counterintelligence (MI5). All these institutions are his natural allies and instruments of truly democratic politics. They can pave Rishi’s return to 10 Downing Street with the bodies of his opponents.
This is of course a mere figure of speech (or is it?). There’s so much Rishi could do before having to resort to violence.
For example, yesterday Sir Edward Davy, LibDem leader, said that Britain should return to the single market as a minimum, or ideally to the EU. This effectively means compromising Britain’s sovereignty, and if that doesn’t constitute high treason, I don’t know what does.
We aren’t talking about casuistic details here, as I hope you understand, but about the sacred principles of British politics, what Vlad calls ‘traditional values’. According to those values, Sir Ed must be immediately arrested, charged and banged in Wormwood Scrubs.
The important thing is not to squander public funds on such incidentals as a trial. A quick phone call to a friendly judge, along the lines of ‘we know where you live’, should do the trick. When Sir Ed is safely incarcerated, the warders could promise some of his rougher cellmates conjugal privileges to make sure that once in means never out.
Since a leader speaks for his whole party, the LibDems must be identified as a party of traitors and summarily disbanded. If any of them protest too loudly, they should be asked rhetorically whether they wish to keep the now late Ed company. (We know where you live.) You’d be amazed how quickly they’ll repudiate their past sins and undertake never to campaign against Rishi again.
Another marginal force, the Reform Party, will be even easier to bring to heel. Its driving force, if not nominally leader, Nigel Farage, is known for his close association with Donald Trump.
Hence Rishi must force Nigel to declare himself – and his whole party by association – a foreign agent. As such, the Reform Party could be legitimately disbanded, with all its leaders made to leave the country. After all, emigration is the better part of valour, as the old saying goes. We know where you live!
That leaves Labour, the current runaway leader in the polls, which may present more of a problem but not an unsolvable one. To start with, Sir Keir Starmer should be invited to tea at the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square. That would reduce his life expectancy to about a fortnight, leaving his party both headless and heedless.
Then it could be ascertained that just about every prominent Labour politician used to belong to the CND or other Soviet fronts. Since British jurisprudence provides for no statute of limitations, they could all be arrested, charged with treason and put into Wormwood Scrubs, where by that time the warders will have learned exactly what to do.
Admittedly, that wouldn’t eliminate all potential Labour candidates, but that’s where Vlad’s lesson on polling procedure will come in handy.
Two blue-rosetted armed soldiers (preferably SAS) could be posted as guards at the entrance to every polling station. They should be ordered to flick the fire selector switch on their L85 rifles and ask every incoming voter what he thinks of the Tory Party.
That’s guaranteed to produce an outburst of loving loyalty, to which the soldiers should respond by saying: “On yer way then, mate. We know where you live.” This should guarantee that right people never cast wrong votes. Just in case, the polling volunteers, MI5 officers all, should have close to hand a stack of pre-prepared voting papers, each with a fat cross next to the name of the Tory candidate.
Such are the lessons of Vlad’s victory. I’m not suggesting they ought to be followed in every detail, but on the other hand it’s arrogant and wrong to ignore successful foreign experience. So I hope you’ll all join me in pledging undying support to the ruling Tory Party.
We know where you live!
This would be funny if we hadn’t seen some of these tactics already in use. The use of the IRS and FBI to target political opponents came to light during the Obama administration and that practice has continued (or accelerated) since. The problems any conservative government would have with such tactics are: 1) finding operatives who are willing to cooperate; and 2) finding media outlets willing to write reports in support of the action.