Party Conferences Held in Parallel Reality

With the aim of providing a demonstration of the efficiency and cost effectiveness market forces can provide, in a humbling display of tri-partisanship, the three main Westminster political parties decided to hold their entire conference season in an alternate universe – built for them by Capita and G4S.

The decision was first trailed by the leader of the Liberal Democrats. In a moving and profound apology, Mr Clegg redefined logic by claiming he was sorry for lying about lying that he was telling the truth. The tone was carried through to the Lib Dem conference where, for a number of days, the party acted in a manner that suggested it was operating on the premise that it was not, in fact, currently the punchline of every political joke in the country.

At the Labour Party conference, Ed Miliband conducted his very own hyperreality experiment when he eulogised Benjamin Disraeli, garnering a great reception in the strange new dimension where ‘one nation’ politics could trump all. Added to the ferocity of an empty and meaningless concept was a strictly observed denial to engage with any of the real factors affecting people back in our dimension crippled by debt, clutching at an almost vaporous National Health Service, scrabbling around to pay their housing costs on time, keep their jobs and still put food on the table. By this point, most observers claimed that nothing appeared to follow any of the conceptual or physical properties of our reality.

In a final and desperate effort to punch through the boundaries of the freshly created realm before its inhabitants became trapped forever, the Tories used their conference to force conceptualism to its very extremes. The trapped delegates hoped that in creating a paradox vast enough, they could puncture a hole in the fabric of the non-space and return to ours. George Osborne was called upon to conduct this groundbreaking experiment. In a speech singularly devoid of truth, he took to the stage.

Tenaciously ignoring the facts of our existence, the chancellor deftly sidestepped the effect welfare cuts would have on the poorest people in our society, in favour of espousing the benefits of further tax breaks for the wealthy. He then delivered a stunning rhetorical device, reiterating the claim that “We Are All in This Together©” on the same platform he had uttered it only a few years previously. Hairline fractures began to appear as the reproduction of reality short-circuited, sending murmurs around the conference hall. Mr Osborne seized the moment, ploughing on to declare that not only was the catchphrase entirely meaningful and honest all those years ago, but that it still was, to this day. The fractures burst open as the temporary conference zone began to fold in on itself at a vast rate. Delegates ran screaming from the hall, attempting to reach ever-shrinking cracks in the fast dissolving space. Many of them, unfortunately, escaped certain death by clambering over menial workers, brought in to staff the conference courtesy of workfare schemes.

All Parties maintain the conference season was a great success.

By Jack Dean