Hating Tories

Maybe Cummings hadn't heard
Immunity is just a word
Now Dominic is feeling rough
He didn't run quite fast enough

Published in Solidarity 536, 26 February 2020

I continue to enjoy Janine Booth’s poetry for its humanity. Her latest collection Fighting Tories: The Force Awakens develops compelling political ideas out of personal experiences and observations.

It's the end of the end of austerity
Can you believe the temerity?
Sajid has said
That his promise is dead
But the few will retain their prosperity

"Austerity no more" is no more
The previous promise ignored
The election is done
And the Tories have won
And the rule of the market is law

I contemplated emigrating
or moving out of town
I'd spend my weekends walking dogs
my weekdays knuckling down

My grandmother was Scottish and
my great-grandma a Jew
And while some borders still stay down
perhaps they'll let me through

Or I could hump my tucker bag
and pitch up in Australia
(Though on that points-based entry test
I'd probably score a failure)

Imagine if every time someone died
on an NHS waiting list
A scar appeared on
the skin of a Tory MP

If every time an MP failed to turn up
to an inconveniently-arranged appointment
They were sanctioned
​their state handouts stopped

Imagine if every time a person went to a food bank
a Tory MP had to go too
Not for a photo opportunity
but because the cupboard was empty

All hail to public hospitals
Which treat us at no cost at all
Come forth and heed the homage call
Give thanks and praise

Admire their shiny corridors
The wonder drugs in well-stocked stores
And colour-coded wings and floors
And curtained bays

Where patients' injuries are healed
By specialists in every field
Equipment-laden trolleys wheeled
In urgency

Pick up the leaflet
pick up a pen
Rate on a scale of nil to ten
how broken is your heart
how much your life is rent apart
Rate your mental state
Is it three or six or eight?

Rate on a scale of nil to ten
Where nil is
I don't give a toss about them'
And ten is
'I'll never feel intact again'

They sleep in mansions instead of tents
They never scale the perimeter fence
There's high-class bogs for the ladies and gents

Only the rich elite may come
Get orf their land, you common scum
Tarquin's squiffy on a shot of rum

So tell us a true-blue campfire story
It's better than bloody Jackanory
The tales that are told of GlastonTory

Jacob Rees Mogg, oh Jacob Rees Mogg
Rose from the bowels of a foul, toxic bog
And stared with intent through a poisonous fog
Searching for public estate he could flog
An accountant who scribes in a three-column log

Janine performs 'That's a Tory' at Well Spoken! Doncaster on 11 May 2017.