YES, several political commentators claim I’ve been a little difficult to read of late – that Anna Karenina, and Nicola Sturgeon’s legal challenge, are simpler to comprehend – but bear with me, I’m sure I can explain myself.

I believe in traditional Conservative values; that’s why I compared the party to the best bits of Paul McCartney’s Glastonbury set, the good old stuff that we know all the words to.

Okay, you’re saying that Macca once wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb and the vomit-inducing Ebony and Ivory. But I must show some modern cultural references if I’m to seem young and energising, don’t I?

Yes, the contest will be tough.

As you know, I’m a woman in a man’s world, and while I’ve looked to be a little ambiguous when it comes to telling the world what a woman actually is – for example,

if a trans woman is, indeed, a woman – let me clear this up for you right now: when Paul McCartney wrote Lady Madonna, I don’t think he was talking about a trans woman.

But if he says he was – which he hasn’t – then he was.

But you want me to expand on how I will lead the nation if those 150,000 old coffin-dodgers – sorry, party members – determine I’m

the best real woman for the job?

Well, I will tell you. I believe in low tax, small state, personal responsibility. By “low tax” do I mean not squeezing the oil companies or the supermarkets who are bagging cash faster than a checkout girl/person bags messages a minute before closing on Saturday? What I say is this: aren’t billionaires people, too?

What do I mean by “small

state”? Well, it’s the opposite of large state, which is the state we will be in if the SNP ever gets independence. Anyway, you won’t leave us because, like us, you moan a lot about the weather. Isn’t that a truism? I love truisms.

My autobiography, which I co-wrote with someone else, is truly full of them. As for “personal responsibility”, well, that speaks for itself doesn’t it, so why should I speak of it?

Yes, you want to ask me about people’s inability to heat their homes and feed their families, about crushed lives and so forth. Listen, I have the experience to tackle the big issues, even if only 11 per cent of the public could pick me out naked in a line-up.

And, as you know, I was defence secretary for about 20 minutes in 2019, until I backed Jeremy Hunt for the leadership contest and Boris came in and threw me back in with the bottom-feeders.

Okay, yes, I had a Margaret Thatcher poster on my wall. But wouldn’t you, too, if you were a floaty-dressed young biological woman standing at Portsmouth Harbour in 1982, wallowing in the heady romance of her glorious fleet sailing off into the glistening morning sun to destroy thousands of young lives – all from a very safe distance?

I hope your reading is now improved.

 

As imagined by Brian Beacom