Labour Manifesto posted by Richard Seymour

The Prime Minister should find out who's forging his signature and sending out bullshit e-mails under his name. Because the prankster has now produced a mock 'Labour Manifesto' that is clearly designed to ruin the reputation of the Labour Party and piss off key groups of supporters who might, unfortunately, take it seriously.

At every stage, it parodies New Labourspeak, its wafer-thin commitments, its fudging, its hypocrisy, its celebration of bankrupt and utterly reactionary policies like ASBOs, PFIs, ID cards, attacks on asylum rights, more intensive road-building, low corporation taxes etc. The terminological inexactitude of their commitments is rendered with hilarious acuity: "we will go further than", "we will improve", "we will set a timetable for", "we will commit to faster...", "we will maintain our commitment to" etc etc. The moronic, robotic reproduction of management jargon is almost ball-crunching: "We will empower ... promote ... fasttrack ... foster entrepreneurship ..." etc. The pitifully vague commitments to appease the left are almost carbon copies of reality: Labour will honour the 'Warwick Agreement' it says, although no one will ever know if they do since its provisions are so vague and, had it not been for the threat of strike action during the election campaign by public sector workers, one of the key commitments - to "engage in effective dialogue" with unions over pensions - could have bitten the dust already. Another thing that is expertly sent up is Labour's ceaseless, idiotic bragging. Barely a page goes by that does not 'remind' the voter of some spurious or fabricated 'achievement' that Labour has made since 1997...

Like I say, the document is obviously a fake. It doesn't even have the Prime Minister's picture on the front cover, which is a dead giveaway. I can't wait for the real thing.