Andy Burnham. A poem from Kevin Higgins

For readers outside the UK, Andy Burnham is a candidate for the leadership of the British Labor Party. He has a video on Youtube touting his credentials as Mr. Everyman. It is said he is entirely made of plastic, a sort of man for all reasons. There's more info in this article in the Guardian.

Here is Irish poet Kevin Higgins' contribution to the Burnham saga.

The Right Honourable Eyelash’s Summer Panic

This is not the gas

I’d hoped to be passing here today.

I wish I was able to tell you

a government of me

would starve useless

eaters of bacon butties

and deep fried Cadbury’s Cream Eggs

in Dundee and Sunderland

just a little more slowly than this government

is so brutally doing at present;

that under me

every old age pensioner,

like the old lady across the road

who died last year of the winter, will receive

their own personal nuclear submarine.

Sadly, recent polls

have rendered such dreams

politically impossible.

As things stand, for half a vote

I’d happily come around and polish

your baby’s bottom;

play hide and seek

with your pet hippopotamus;

tell you no student should have to pay

for university by going on the game

more than five nights a week;

mow your lawn;

nationalise the railways; or cure 

your husband’s baldness.

Between now and elect-me-day

if you need someone to plant

slobbery kisses on your elderly uncle’s

surprise third buttock,

anything you want, I am it.

KEVIN HIGGINS