THE country is in crisis and people are looking to Her Majesty’s Opposition for answers just as they’re having a seaside punch-up. These are the headline bouts:
Keir Starmer vs Angela Rayner
High boots, gobby, a flame-coloured mane: Starmer has none of these. But his deputy does and terrifies Southerners who nonetheless confuse her with Jess Phillips. Rayner will build an unassailable lead throughout the conference but nobody can be arsed with another leadership race.
Left vs further left
The Tories are out there f**king everything, so the key priority must be to pick a fight with someone on your own side. Whether anti-Semitism or racism or transphobia, finding some dodgy tweets from your opponent’s teenage years is what Labour needs to be doing right now.
Sadiq Khan vs Andy Burham
Mayorbowl, or who gets to run this shambles once Keir loses to Boris, is the tastiest scrap of the week. Two men coming off regional wins in their local sports centres now trying to make it in arenas. Burnham had plummeted down the rankings until discovering a cock o’ the north Oasis swagger and more subtle eyeshadow. Khan is fresh off a win and remains the son of a bus driver. Who will triumph?
Celebrity vs other celebrity
Never short of famous supporters, Labour still can’t decide whether it wants to be the party that hates JK Rowling or the one that hates Maureen Lipman. But who will this week’s high-profile clash be? Stormzy vs Noam Chomsky? Steve Coogan vs Miriam Margolyes? Whoever is it, it’ll be better than anything the Tories could manage.
Jeremy Corbyn vs Piers Corbyn
The undercard the die-hards are waiting for, where the pious and incorruptible socialist who would have won if everyone had voted for him takes on the family’s breakout star, anti-vaxxer and mad-scientist-in-a-movie Piers. Which brother’s non-reality-based worldview wiill triumph, and who will care? Only at Brighton with Labour.
