If

by Martin Rowson

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are telling you its contents don't inspire;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
Based on evidence that you're a liar;
If you could say, when you stood for election.
That you'd do this or that, however crass,
While simultaneously, upon reflection,
Readying yourself for your volte face...

If you can say, straight-faced, you think Fraternity
Will guide your every step, yet think it's fine
To deny your party's own paternity
And run away from every picket line;
If you can blithely organise a witch hunt
On anyone if this will guarantee
You consequently reassure some rich cunt
And keep spreading the lies though all can see...

If you behold a whole electoral system
That's so unfit it's worse than a disease
But say (though never quite getting to list them)
"Fix this? It's not in my priorities";
If you can see your country being broken;
Trashed; by fascist bigots' bluster struck,
But say "This is no time to be awoken!
We're going to build a better Clusterfuck!"

If you can dream (but only when you're sleeping);
If you can think (so quiet it seems you don't);
If you can make a stand (but then start creeping
Away from where you stood, saying you won't);
If you can see the poorest people queuing
For food banks or a place where they'll keep warm
And think that this endorses you pursuing
Yet more Public Sector so-called "Reforms"...

If you can use a playbook that you reckon
Works, though it's three decades out of date;
If you can see the chance of power beckon
And yet won't see the failing British State
Is so beyond repair that this whole nation
Is doomed - and let me now be quite explicit -
Then your placebos for resuscitation
Mean, that when they call it, you're complicit...

If you, to sum up, continue being wooden,
More woodily than forests full of trees,
More woodenly than puppets, then you should in
All honesty admit: it's to appease;
And if you think that that is Opposition,
And means the next election's duly won;
Even if it does, Keir, my suspicion's
That that's no Labour Government, my son!