Michael Sheen to become Jeremy Corbyn “for the foreseeable future”

Michael Sheen, the film and theatre star, who declared his intention to retire from acting and become a full time political activist, has agreed to take on the role of Jeremy Corbyn until the Labour leader “retires, resigns or hopefully isn’t assassinated.”

Mr Sheen, who currently plays the voice of the world’s best selling brand of furniture polish, will replace the famously tongue tied leader and add “soaring oratory, impassioned rhetoric and absolutely no policy decisions, no siree no” urgently to his repertoire.

“It’s quite clear that the Labour party is in desperate need of someone who can articulate pain and instil hope in the population, without adding any of that tricky stuff like identifying the causes or coming up with solutions,” explained the actor. “My heartfelt speech last year explaining that the NHS is really great but something should be done to sort it out, moved a lot of people to nod vigorously in agreement. That’s the sort of rising-up I hope to achieve within the Labour movement from now on”

Mr Sheen then donned a white beard and pulled on a corduroy jacket and replied in his new role as Mr Corbyn. “Is it too much to ask that we the People, who for too long have been trammelled to the yoke of oppression and servitude, should be denied hope and freedom?” he yelled “Can it be that our children, who are surely our greatest hope, now face a future that we would deny them?”

As the room of reporters leapt to their feet and started to eagerly applaud Mr Sheen-Corbyn, he continued to condemn the government, berate rail operators and fell to his knees and wept as he praised “selfless and angelic nurses.” When asked briefly by the cheering crowd his solution to an aging population requiring far greater social and medical care, Mr Sheen-Corbyn burst into an impromptu song of praise to Nye Bevan based upon “an old Welsh miners song of brotherhood…. And sisterhood… And LGBThood,” he added hastily

Meanwhile, rumours that the Conservative party has employed Penelope Keith to play Theresa May have been strenuously denied, although Meryl Streep has been seen entering Downing Street dressed in a blue twin set.

The announcement that Jim Davidson has been elected as the 15th UKIP leader in two months and intends to become the “acceptable voice of right wing populism” was met with no surprise whatsoever.

About Faith

Jeremy-Corbyn_halo

The rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the left in the UK recently has been fascinating. Most of my friends are of the left or at least casual Labour party supporters. A number of them have been alarmed or disheartened but most have been excited. For many of a certain age, it is a trip down memory lane – the happy days of student protest and Red Wedge. For youngsters, it is finally someone that speaks their language of liberty and equality (ignoring that those two ideals are mutually exclusive.)

It is also notable that the same subset of friends all loudly declare their atheism. Atheism is de rigeur at the moment and seems to have acquired a cachet and coolness that it lacked in my youth. People post pictures of themselves brandishing copies of the Origin of Species with the hashtag #atheistlives, something which might have rather alarmed Charles Darwin. I came to atheism in my late teens – I desperately wanted to believe in God, but the universe only made sense to me when you removed God. If an omnipotent being really existed, surely it wouldn’t be so cack-handed in its management.

The idealism of the Cobynistas and their belief in a white-bearded deity who will bring peace and justice to all humanity seems to have a rather touching overlap with my original belief in God. I wonder if it demonstrates that most of us need to believe in something that defies all objective analysis. My friends who have embraced the absence of God have found they need something else to fill the space God occupied and placed Jeremy Corbyn there. The rituals and prayers of the faithful have become rallies and Facebook posts.

As with God, no matter how much I want to, I can’t believe in socialism. Socialism, at least the sort espoused by Jeremy Corbyn, has never succeeded anywhere in the world. It is a brilliant, perfect theory that is disastrous in practice. It doesn’t work because ultimately it relies on trust; if you have faith that your fellow workers will all do their bit and everyone will work for the greater good, you will too. This is why you can have a socialist village, where everyone knows each other and slackers can be identified and called out. But you can’t have a socialist town as you can never be certain that someone you don’t know is doing what they should be. And without that direct connection, you substitute trust for rules and rules are enforced by the state and the state becomes an authoritarian regime that allows no dissent.

I hope I am wrong and when I die I find that God is there ready to lead me to a better place (or at least not shove me towards the fiery pit.) I also hope that if Labour win the next election it ushers in an era of full employment and a fairer, freer society. But I’m not putting my faith in it.