Labour pains

In Competition No. 2444 you were invited to offer two stanzas in the metre and rhyme-scheme of Byron’s ‘Don Juan’, making fun of one or more of the Labour party’s present embarrassments.

‘Never,’ said Charles Seaton, my predecessor, when he passed on the sacred baton, ‘give them a political subject. They get too hot under the collar to be funny.’ How wrong he was! Congratulations not only on being amusing but also on handling the challenging ottava rima with verve and skill. Moyra Blyth and Ray Kelley deserve better than to be runners-up. The winners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Noel Petty.

For Charles, the warning bells began to chime.
His staff had brought about his very worst case:
Among the prisoners who’d served their time
(Or maybe half) were some of that accurst race
Of foreigners, Napoleons of crime
Who never should have been here in the first place.
They’d promptly vanished, crying ‘Carpe diem!’,
A fact Charles declined to tell the PM.