Two-Tier Keir: Being a Short
Account of a Trickster
He sought to be in politics—
_Self-virtued Dalai Lama.
Instead, we found through all his tricks:
_A trickster, Two-Tier Starmer.
He promised all he’d play it straight,
_He’d never be a harmer;
But all his promises were bait,
_The angler, Two-Tier Starmer.
And worst of all he hurt the best,
_Yes, savaged our dear farmers;
And kicked the pensioners in their chest,
_As ruthless, Two-Tier Starmer.
We thought the worst had come and fled,
_That Briton might be calmer;
But Mandelson then reared his head—
_Bum-luck for Two-Tier Starmer.
At least our allies would be safe:
_With them we’d stand, be armour;
No matter that betrayal’s base—
_Back-stabbed them, Two-Tier Starmer.
In everything he’s done and said
_The only truth’s been drama—
To lead the living to be dead:
_Our ruin, Two-Tier Starmer.
So, when the reckoning day appears
_(May sooner come its karma)
The country will recall these years:
_And name them Two-Tier Starmer.
Poet’s Note: Peter Mandelson is a senior UK Labour politician and key figure behind Tony Blair’s “New Labour.” Long seen as a master political operator (his sobriquet: ‘The Prince of Darkness’), his career has also been marked by controversy, including past ministerial resignations and associations that have drawn public scrutiny (notably his connection to Jeffrey Epstein). His recent reappointment as UK ambassador to the United States—despite such baggage—struck critics as emblematic of establishment recycling, hence his appearance in the poem as an unwelcome return.
James Sale has had over 50 books published, most recently, “Mapping Motivation for Top Performing Teams” (Routledge, 2021). He has been nominated by The Hong Kong Review for the 2022 Pushcart Prize for poetry, has won first prize in The Society of Classical Poets 2017 annual competition, and performed in New York in 2019. He is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. His most recent poetry collection is DoorWay. For more information about the author, and about his Dante project, visit https://englishcantos.home.blog. To subscribe to his brief, free and monthly poetry newsletter, contact him at [email protected].
Thank you SO MUCH for this, James! It is a subject I’ve been following on “X” for about a year now.
Of course, I have to mention that I love ALL your rhymes for “Starmer.” He truly is a piece of work.
And speaking of the farmers, my favorite anti-Starmer thing I have seen on X to date was a beleaguered farmer with a feed cap on which was written: STUCK FARMER!
May God save you all from him and his lot.
Thanks Paul – for being so stuck in with this! Yes, we are in a dreadful situation – aside from betraying our best and biggest ally, the USA, the sheer incompetence, malevolence, corruption and imbecility of this government (and this man) just beggars belief. If it weren’t for the fact that I believe in God and that the darkest hour is often before the dawn, I would say the UK is finished as a democratic country – but, as I say, the darkest hour can be just before that dawn: and hope is a virtue. Thanks so much for your comments – keep monitoring our descent into darkness! PS it’s almost as if I need to write a new canto for my HellWard to include this witless crew.
Fantastic, James! Now we across the pond are wishing we had thought of some good rhymes for Obama …. Oh, wait — may we steal some of yours?
Thanks Cynthia – yes, a great transatlantic link. You have my full permission to use these rhymes; only remember one thing (obvious to you I am sure): Starmer is a straight trochee but Obama is an amphibrach. This metrical variation will give you permission to do all sorts of interesting things!
Damn, James! I love it! You’ve definitely taken that pillock out behind the woodshed! That’s gonna leave marks.
Yes, it will leave marks, Mike – whenever you’re behind the woodshed and experiencing ‘bum-luck’, as I am sure you understand!
I’m not sure why, James, but you’ve reminded me of Susan’s Jeremy Thorpe splinters joke!
Ah, Mike, Jeremy Thorpe: now there’s a bad blast from our UK past!!
The rhyming is beautiful. I must admit I didn’t know what Starmer was until I looked it up to better understand this poem. I initially thought Starmer must be some kind of word for Trump. I think it fits both ways.
Glad you like the rhyming Jenna – thank you!
The bad things that I have been hearing about Starmer from friends in the U.K. struck me (at first) as mythical. But as time went on and I read more, I was appalled that such a sick bastard could have ever been elected to the leadership of a major nation. It’s one thing for a leader to be incompetent. It’s a whole new level when he’s also corrupt and evil.
One of the most magical aspects of your superb political poem is your maintenance of the rhyme through all the verses! I savored them in my mind as they seemed to reinforce their presence and began echoing. From this side of the pond, I had to look up Two-Tier Keir (Starmer) and fully understand why your poem was a brilliant broadside! Fantastic as always, but this one was particularly adept and needed. And here I thought we had problems over here!
Thanks Roy – appreciate this, and your use of the word ‘magical’ (whilst perhaps overextended in consideration of my few rhymes) does remind me of that wonderful exposition by Professor Peter Levi on Virgil: “The most memorable criticism of Virgil was Agrippa’s, who thought he had invented a new kind of affectation in his magical-seeming combinations of ordinary words. That of course is what we mean by poetry.”
Excellent satire, James! The repeated rhymes with Starmer build to a grand finale. No subject ever deserved the skewering more.
Thanks Brian – rhymes can go down well – they help make sense of the senseless!
James, I just love your romp-along revelations on the two-faced disgrace stoking chaos in the U.K. You’ve called this fork-tongued fake out with this scathing and highly entertaining linguistic kick up the jacksy for a prize jerk! I couldn’t believe it when the infamous Mandy was wheeled out of the closet once again… I had to check I hadn’t inadvertently stepped into a tardis on my way back from Walmart! James, thank you for making me laugh out loud during dire times. I am most grateful.
You can’t stop yourself Susan, can you? Even when writing prose, you end up sounding like a poem: ‘romp-along revelations’, ‘fork-tongued fake’, ‘jacksy for a prize jerk’, and so on. Alliteration (that could be a disease, but which) in your capable hands adds to the music of my invective! Thank you. As for the Tardis (apologies to our American readers who may not be familiar with the now infantile program called ‘Dr Who’, which was awesome in 1966 but which is now putrid Wokery that even Disney has dropped like something from a camel’s rear), don’t we wish we had one? Then we could boogie back – and be there … when things seemed so great!
Ah, James, many sympathetic feelings. We in California hear similar things. Highest prices, highest taxes, most extensive and expensive regulations, decades of election treachery, and an earthquake of state government fraud that promises to reveal theft in the trillions. No betrayal of allies yet, but our longtime Governor Newsom is running for President. Both here and in Britain, the farmers are least fortunate because they cannot move and take their land with them. Others are getting out while they can, but there is unaccountable hope. Top ranked candidate for this year’s election of a new California governor is London-born Steve Hilton, a Tory in the UK turned Republican here. Finger crossed for us all!
Ah, dear Margaret – unaccountable hope is what we hope for; let’s never lose it. I tell myself constantly the old adage: the darkest hour is just before the dawn. May the London-born (I was myself London-born, but moved early to Kent so that Susan Jarvis Bryant and myself could both be county-mates!) Steve Hilton deliver you from the evils of communism; for let’s be frank – that is exactly what these Woke, self-righteous prigs are!
Politics aside (those two tongued charmers), the refrain hits and I thought the angler image was especially strong. It’s funny how British English and American English afford different rhymes…that open up different ideas to be explored. Fun, punchy poem.
It is indeed Michael; and it is not even the pronunciation that can get tricky: I am so used to American writing that I find myself deviating sometimes in the spelling. Is it ‘-ise’ or ‘-ize’? But one things for sure: it’s all very rich, and the sheer vocabulary of the English language (by far the biggest of any language in the world) provides us all with such wonderful material to work with. Thanks for commenting.
While Russian warships accompany sanctioned oil tankers through the English Channel, Starmer does jack. What a POS. Love your Starmer rhymes and near rhymes.
Thanks Cheryl – I had to think for a second (but only a second) what POS meant. But yeah – absolutely, you have grasped how bad things are over here.
I’m 1/4 English (a descendent of the Birdsalls of Biddesall Manor, whence my middle name.) & 1/4 Scottish, which makes me half British, and it breaks my heart to learn that the homeland of my forebears suffers under such despicable leadership. Come back, Maggie! I wish there were something I could do. Even the King, the King himself, is a self-neutered rag doll. Oh, Charles…
This explains so much CB – why you must be at least – the very minimum – a half decent person, what with all this British ancestry! I did an Ancestry.com (indeed, am still doing it when I have a minute,) and discovered some surprising things about myself: only 3% Scottish blood, apparently; 42% Anglo-Saxon; and big surprise for me: 0% Irish. This was a big surprise because my mother’s maiden name is Santry – if you’ve ever been to Dublin you will know there is a large district of the town called Santry. I always assumed that, therefore, on the matrilineal side it led back to Irish blood, but no it seems. However, I did discover one thing that – since we are such good mates – I can share with you CB: I traced my roots back to the C16th so far, and along the way I found that my sixth great grandmother, born 1710 in Oxford (a place very close to … Stratford) was … Elizabeth Shakespear! Now I don’t want to claim too much, but you get the drift of my pleasure in such a discovery! She had BTW a son called William Barnes the Younger, and he was born in Benson – another name of massive import to readers of the SCP!!!
Tough enjoyed this though I am not familiar with the specific political context, with the general understanding that the British Empire now seems to be officially dead. How very sad to see the decline of one history’s greatest civilizations.
Sad, dear Benson, sad: it is not just the Empire that is dead, but the very idea that we are civilised – we are becoming a banana republic in which everything depends on patronage, the middle class (that is, the entrepreneurs) are destroyed, and two-tier-kier justice reigns. However – hope lives and the fight goes on. Perhaps we are at the point of a huge overthrow of the dark, demonic forces that have taken control of our country? We will see. Thanks.
As a Brit, I really appreciate this biting assessment of our current leader. You left out one thing, maybe to me the most contemptible of all that Starmer has done: his role, when DPP, of constantly harassing servicemen who faced trumped-up charges.
Thanks David – yes, sorry to leave it out; inevitably one cannot cover everything, but you are right. It is utterly disgraceful what he has done – and where are we now? In a country seemingly unable to defend itself, or anything for that matter. The recent situation whereby customs officers and police are flown out at massive expense to confiscate living equipment from Chagossians returning to their homeland when – simultaneously we cannot stop either illegal immigrants entering our country via our own Channel, or stop Russian vessels breaking our sanctions via our Channel, is absolutely scandalous and massively hypocritical.
I agree. There is talk of war with Russia, and truthfully I can’t imagine who would consider that Starmer’s Britain is worth defending. Especially when the defenders are subject to harassment from lawyers. And when those being defended include a lot of people who hate this country anyway.
Satire in the greatest British tradition! Finding different rhymes for “Starmer” is its defining feature, which you pull off deftly. I also appreciate the double-entendre “bum luck” in discussing Mandelson.
Hi Adam – thank you for appreciating the double-entendre. I hoped it would subtly recommend itself to the discriminating reader and that I could pull it off more deftly than ever Mandelson could. You are just such a discriminating reader!