Does no one want the Red Wall voters?

There was outrage in some sections of the Labour party today after its leader, Sir Keir Starmer, praised Satan. Writing in the Mephistophelian Clarion, a publication with a high proportion of readers who are lycanthropes, vampires, imps, goblins and daemons, Sir Keir said that the ‘Prince of Darkness’ had sometimes been ‘mis-understood’ by the left. ‘It seems to me only right that Lucifer should be credited with a very real dynamism and get-up-and-go, as well as for taking a diverse, vibrant and non-judgmental approach to the notion of sin.’

Sir Keir’s unexpected stance was defended by party moderates, one of whom commented: ‘There’s nothing wrong with what Keir wrote. The Labour party should always be a broad church and that means there must be room for Satanists, just as there is room for idiots like Clive Lewis.’ However, it was pointed out that Sir Keir’s praise for Beelzebub in the Mephistophelian Clarion directly contradicted his comments made during an interview yesterday published in the Prolapsed Altar Boy, a magazine for ageing Roman Catholics. On this occasion when asked about the Devil, Starmer replied: ‘You know, the infernal one is not really my cup of tea at all and I blame him for an awful lot of wickedness in the world. If pressed, I would probably say that he was quite evil.’

This apparent contradiction was brushed aside by members of Sir Keir’s team, one of whom commented: ‘As the great Nils Lofgren once said, it is not a crime to change your mind. When the circumstances change, it is only right that our policies should change to reflect such an occurrence. Quite plainly this was a case of the circumstances changing very quickly indeed.