In a press conference earlier today, a shadow cabinet spokesman announced that the conclusion of the Period of Reflection and Contemplation Commission on why things went wrong last Thursday is that ‘It wuz the sheds wot dun it’
“It cannot be a co-incidence” he said “that the appearance of all of these festively-decorated wooden sheds on our high streets during the last two weeks of the campaign, and particularly on polling day itself, distracted voters from their main purpose of electing a Labour government.”
He went on to observe that the main concentration was in marginal constituencies: “We have clear evidence of lifelong Labour voters being distracted on their way to polling stations, by special deals on Artisan Crepes. How are we, the party of gloom and despondency, supposed to counter such overt festive cheer? Our traditional voters have no time for crepes like that!”
He also felt certain stallholders trivialised the party’s message. “We rely on our Labour heartlands to provide a victory, but all around the country voters were being offering heart-shaped things from stalls named ‘Heartland’. This caused confusion to our voters, who instead of finding Polling Stations bought baubles and bangles instead.”
But his main criticism was in support of the oppressed self-employed workers who, with no union representation, are made to work for days on end in squalid conditions. “Stallholders have to pay, yes pay, to work in a tiny wooden box, wrapped-up against the bitter cold for fifteen hours a day for weeks on end. If not doing that, they are back in their four-bedroomed detached hovel working round the clock making more heart-shaped things to sell at incredible mark-ups to people who only stopped to get directions to a Polling Station.”
He concluded by saying that, when his party ultimately return to power sometime in the twenty-second century, they will impose swingeing taxation on not only small businesses like Heartland, but on local councils that subsidise their austerity by littering their streets with such abominable creations.