Change

by Steven Taylor

This time tomorrow, next week
or yesterday, at the latest (it’s hard
to tell the difference)

Sir Keir Starmer

will be the new Prime Minister. My parents

if they’d survived this long, would have been
alive to see it, still in low paid jobs, a textile
cutter and a machinist. Shockingly insecure,
unprotected from the pleasures of the market.

The global fluctuations in the price of fuel and
raw materials, the cheaper labour found elsewhere,
in particular, where the previous PM originated.

Because Capital provides for irony.

They would have voted (Labour, not
Conservative) but expected nothing.

The mills have closed and factories finished.

Britain’s future lies in banking, the growth
of tumours. Armaments and poverty. Change

is what’s left over
when you’ve paid your bills
and done your Saturday shopping. Bought

yourselves an icing bun.