MY new book will be published in May by Flapjack Press, and will be called Fiery Words for Hellish Times. Today I am going to blast you with three brand new poems which will be included in it: advance warning that targets will be hit and a few shibboleths broken.  

Firstly, following the defection of Suella Braverman to Reform, official confirmation that it is now a recycling bin for worn out Tories, I give you my new word for the uniparty thus created: both a compound noun of its constituent parts and an instruction to its hapless and horrible followers. 

CONFORM

Conform, we say, you hapless Square Deal Serfs!
Here is your flag, o’er there your place to shout 
And while you rage at folk worse off than you 
We’ll turn your empty pockets inside out. 
We are the Uniparty of the Right 
Billionaires’ lies our social chloroform 
Recycled Tories now our trusted friends: 
Sign up, you fools, spew hatred and CONFORM!

Forget your NHS, your council home:
We’ll privatise it all, sell to our friends 
You’ll die on trolleys in choked corridors 
We’ll laugh as we collect our dividends. 
But fear not: here in our plush Mayfair clubs 
We hear the rage which rises from your throats 
As Baldrick-Farage shares his cunning plan: 
He’ll wreck your lives while mouthing “Stop The Boats!”

And now one that sums up everything right now. Everything. 

EVERY DAY THE CLOCKS GO BACK

Every day the clocks go back.
Back to hatred, racism, war,
binary solutions, them or us,
with us or against us.
Back to a world 
where the grotesque meat grinder 
of the military-industrial complex 
churns out its corpses and its profits 
unchecked, untrammelled, unhindered. 
Every day the clocks go back. 
The glaciers melt. 
The waters rise. 
The arms dealers cheer. 
The bosses gloat. 
The clocks go back. 
Gorbachev’s reforming vision died —
betrayed by turncoats 
in his own party.
The IMF and the World Bank
declared the end of history 
that they had won 
and that greed was officially good. 
The people of Eastern Europe
starved and drank
while the fruits of their labour 
was stolen by the oligarch few 
and spent on footballers and mansions. 
The clocks went back —
and many gave up
disappeared down a rabbit hole
via a computer screen 
or swapped the modern red flag of hope 
for the chloroform cloth of religion. 
But some of us didn’t. 
Some of us still know 
that the enemy of your enemy is never your friend 
unless he actually is 
that “freedom” means not just what is allowed
to come out of your mouth
but what is allowed to go in 
and that in every corner of this earth 
there is a ventriloquist’s dummy
called god. 
I rage for Palestine
and against the cognitive dissonance 
of Sykes-Picot and Balfour
I rage for the Kurds 
especially the socialist feminist Kurds of Rojava
Their lands stolen by Sykes-Picot too
but ignored by much of the Left 
because their plight doesn’t fit 
into an anachronistic “anti-imperialist” narrative
I rage for the Iranian people
brutalised in 2026 as in 1979
but ignored by the Left 
for the same reason
and for Darfur, and Rwanda, and so many more
and I rage against the final and most obscene antisemitism of all 
funded and planned by bankers and industrialists
which wiped out the Bundists’ power and vision 
in death camps and ghettoes 
and gave the world Netanyahu. 
Ceasefire now.
Everywhere. 
Some chance.
Some hope. 
If not…
the clocks will go back
one final time 
our species will become extinct —
and we will deserve it. 

And back home one final simple message.

TIME TO GO, STARMER 

He said he’d tax non-doms —
Some thought he said “condoms”
And that is a measure
Of the task at hand 
There’s widespread estrangement 
And huge disengagement 
From all politicians 
In our battered land 
The change must be massive
Not timid and passive 
Determined and forceful
Not weak and polite 
For watching and waiting
And snarling and hating
Are our next opponents: 
The populist Right.

Happier words next time, I promise. This week I just wanted to rage.