Labour Party

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Labour Party Conference, 2006

The Labour Party or Zanu-LieBore!!1 as they are formally known, was formed in the dark days of the late 19th-century in order to give voice to those many millions of people who were too weak to ask of their top-hatted masters whether another helping of thin soup might be possible. Originally formed as a socialist party it has changed in recent years to a mish mash of socialism and robbing popular Tory policies.

History

Formation

The British Manual Labour Party of Workers, Peasants and Guardian Readers (to give it its full title) was formed in 1880 by Kier Hardon, a jolly man with a hearty laugh and generous smile. Thanks to Hardon and his winning ways, many weak and poor people were encouraged to limp to the polls, dodge the policeman's baton and vote for his new party and elect Britain's first socialist government in 1922. Because this was a socialist government, the royal family were immediately shot, all private property was confiscated by the state (or The State, if you prefer), Britain became a satellite-state of the USSR and your kids' teacher was replaced by a lesbian in a beret with a red star on it to teach them Das Kapital. Well, not really.

Rise to prominence

Clement Atlee teamed-up with a rightwing Conservative to fight a fascist dictator. The modern-day understanding of this makes him a neocon and I for one will be voting for the Liberal Democrats instead!

After this, the Labour Party soon supplanted the Liberal Party as the main opposition to The Conservative Party in Parliament. By the time Adolf Hitler turned out not to be a decent sort with a sensible attitude to communism but a mad racist imperialist hell-bent on destroying Europe (albeit taking-down communism on the way) the Labour Party were considered trustworthy enough by the establishment to form a coalition with Winston Churchill. After the war, Labour won another term by a landslide under Clement Attlee and, as predicted, Britain became a Marxist police-state. Not really, they just created the NHS and built lots of prefab houses.

The postwar years - "to me, to you"

In the postwar years, government regularly switched between the Conservatives and Labour until the 1970s when the Labour-affiliated trade union movement decided that the best way to get the common man on your side was to let the streets fill with rubbish, only work two days a week, strike because your mate's legs were cold and live entirely on beer and sandwiches. The British electorate promptly chose Margaret Thatcher to be their leader in 1979.

The Wilderness Years

Falco in the video for his Europe-wide 1983 hit "Rock Me Michael Foot"

In the 1980s, Labour decided to counter Conservative accusations that they were a party living in the past by choosing thrusting dynamic young buck Michael Foot as their leader and remaining tied to unions lead by forward-thinking types like Arthur "Stalin" Scargill. After this approach failed to make Labour popular with anyone except the NME, the party had another rethink and dynamic forward-thinking Welsh slaphead Neil Kinnock became Labour leader. Kinnock picked the Labour Party up roughly by its collective cloth-cap and shifted it a little to the right, ditching inexplicably unpopular policies such as the nationalisation of banks and that well-known Soviet success-story, the planned economy. Unfortunately, despite a revival in Labour's fortunes and Thatcher's descent into madness and eventual destruction by John Major, Labour still found themselves unable to win an election because The Sun put a picture of Kinnock on the front cover looking like a lightbulb. People living in the burnt-out, needle-strewn ruins of their council estate which had built-up under Thatcher's stirling efforts to "make the country better" had been convinced of Labour's policies before realising, once they'd wiped away the tears of mirth, that Kinnock looked like a big lightbulb and promptly voted Conservative.

Smith to Blair

Kinnock resigned to become a Lord and work for the EU and was replaced by disco-dancing Scotsman John Smith. Unfortunately, after only a couple of years of being Labour leader, Smith was murdered by the Trotskyist tyrant Alan Milburn, under the orders of the noble Communist warrior Tony Benn and was replaced by Tony Blair who promptly did the same trick as Kinnock had regarding the party and their collective hat and caused controversy by wanting to ditch "Clause Four", Labours age-old commitment to public ownership of business which they'd clearly always carried out whenever they got into government. Its replacement is some wet liberal rubbish about Labour being a "democratic socialist" party who want a "dynamic relationship between private and public" rather than all that stirring stuff about the lantern-jawed proletariat bravely fighting the upper-classes police footsoldiers from ramshackle barricades. Middle-class Guardian readers were particularly upset about the ditching of Clause Four because it's not like any of them had thousands of pounds tied-up in shares or anything like that. Blair and his accolytes (including his own sinister Joseph Goebbels-figure, Peter Mandelson) decided to re-brand the Labour Party as "New Labour" which, ironically, is a label still sticking after over a decade

The Blair years

Tony Blair spent millions of pounds on marketing the Labour Party as an electable alternative to the Conservative "I can't believe they're still alive" Party

In 1997 the British working-class demonstrated their hatred of "sellout" Blair's ditching of Clause Four by handing him a landslide victory. The Conservatives replaced John Major with the sun out of The Tellytubbies and Major retired to seek-out a smaller pair of spectacles, consume some warm beer and become a philanthopic donator of useless governance. Blair promptly became a sort of Lord Protector figure and was determined never to relinquish power, until June 2007 when he did. The loser.

The Brown years

More commonly known as "The Brown Streak". Nobody knows yet; certainly, that name doesn't bode well. Harriet Harman succeeded John Prescott as Deputy Leader, people wondered during the First Round where Hazel Blears had got to, it turned out that Harriet had been sitting on her all along, after all Hazel's only little, unlike her expenses claims.

Gordon Brown's accession to power was easy; he had God on his side, as do all Scotsmen. Some of Gordon Brown's first tests of competancy have been the Northern Rock crisis, when the seaside resorts of Blackpool and Morecambe both ran perilously short of hard sweets, the 'Summer Flooding' of Gloucestershire (a disastrous remake of 'Grease' on water) and his handling of the fall-out from the 'Credit Crunch', a delicious chocolate-coated but particularly crumbly American delicacy.

Gordon Brown saw an interesting reaction to his part in The Leaders Debates.

Following the 2010 General Election, which nobody won although Labour even less so than others, Broon fae Troon decided to step Doon. As the time of writing, various people are standing for the upcoming leadership election but we can still tell you that a Milliband will win.

Why do so many people vote Labour?

• People love the great taste?
• Gordon Brown's winning smile and easy-going humour?
• They are illegal-immigrants and the Daily Mail told them that Labour were planning to give them a billion pounds a year and a free palace?
• It eases their guilt about being middle-class and having two cars?
• Most of their voters are actually Daily Mail readers, who want something to whinge and moan about?

But The Number One Most Popular Reason:

• To spite the Tories, those bastards.

Policies

• Not pissing-off Rupert Murdoch. Just think, he might put a badly-photoshopped image of Gordon Brown on the front cover of The Times with the body of a chicken or something.
• Gordon Brown is always right (previously "Tony Blair is always right", there is now a sub-clause stating that "Tony Blair stopped being right on the 27th of June 2007").
• Having tea at the Trade Union Congress instead of beer and sandwiches, as laid out by Tony in that marvellously-witty little poem he gave us all a few years ago.
• Not arguing with the United States even when its being really silly.
• Not arguing with the European Union even when its being really silly (see Lisbon Treaty).
• To pass new laws with their new Wellnote-Britain policy to gently tempt but ultimately force the longterm sick and disabled back into longterm cheap slave labour. Concentration workcamps are also under consideration.
• Giving the Iraqi government Britain's fullest support by standing back and biting their lips when the United States commences its latest variation on Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L)
• Ignoring leading British generals when they point-out that Operation Make Things Even Worse made things even worse.
• Implementing any starry-eyed hi-tech newfangled system that was sold to them by nice businessmen regardless of well-founded concerns that it might make things worse rather than better (see ID Cards)
• The encouragement of religious tolerance by inviting religious organisations to run state funded schools. These madrasses and seminaries have been highly successful in keeping Muslim and Christian children apart until they're old enough to have a proper fight. These schools have been praised by Mahmoud Ahmadajihad, Inquisitor Benedict and L. Ron Hubbard.
• Modernising the new honours system, so that generosity may be rewarded in the form of peerages. Their policy dictates that to prove how generous you are, you donate a large sum to the Labour Party, and after approval of the Honours Commision, a peerage will be sent to you through the post. David Cameron of the Conservative Party criticised the decision calling it "Greedy and unfair to the working class."

Notes on a Hardie/Hardy Dynasty

From the party's formation in 1900 until the First World War, the Labour party was constantly led by the left wing House of Hardie Their position on the party's left meant they suffered a brutal propaganda war with the right wing press. Many Labour left wingers wish to reinstall the Hardy dynasty , rallying around the truly terrifying new blood Tom , a young actor who has already played 'Death Wish' Charles Bronson in a biopic.

King Lear Hardie was the first Labour Prime Minister. However, this ended when he went insane, left the country to his two vicious daughters and got naked in a thunderstorm. Premiership handed over to Chancellor of the exchequer Thomas Hardy, who was voted out at the 1911 General Election later that year because the public saw too much of him moping on a Moor. The next year, a General Election was announced, with a surprise victory for party favourites the Hardy Boyz, after Jeff Swanton Bombed Liberal PM David Lloyd George through a table. When a general election was announced in 1914, they were expected to beat Tory leaders the Dudley Boyz, but with Lloyd George still sour about 1912, he interfered and hit Matt with a chair.

Opposition to WWI saw the expiry of the left-wing Hardy dynasty. Keir was boning some posh totty 1/3 his age, Queer was discovered to have squandered his allowances on Wizard of Oz merch, Thomas kept brooding and eventually took up a job writing jingoistic crap for the Propaganda bureau, and intense personal quarrels between Matt and Jeff made another Hardy premiership impossible.

The party has been on a downward curve towards completely abandoning the socialism of the Hardys ever since. Nye Bevan Hardy, a cousin to the the Boyz and, as head of the house in Wales, the nearest heir at that time tried to reclaim the party on a wave of popularity from his NHS, but died before he could.

By this time, the family's influence on the party had severely waned. The only MP since of the Hardy bloodline was Tony Benn, an illegitimate son of Thomas. He remains a rallying force for Hardy restorationists.