Subscribe

Reform or Restore? A guide to the choice Britain's worst arseholes are making

IN the constituency of Makerfield, knobheads face an agonising dilemma: Nigel Farage’s Reform or Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain? We help them decide:

Issues

Both parties have made the wise decision to discard trivial issues like education, the economy, and employment in favour of a relentless focus on immigration. But while chickenshit Reform only wants to freeze non-essential immigration, Restore demands net-negative immigration, ie. sending them back. Which does your heart truly desire?

Image

Cloth-cap wearing Farage looks like an angry gamekeeper threatening to shoot children for trespassing, which makes him an immensely sympathetic figure any Briton will automatically identify with. But Lowe’s pinched, reddened features make him resemble a local squire who kills a man drink-driving and gets off on a technicality. A tough choice.

Personality

We all know Nigel, the beer-drinking smoking thin-skinned man of the people who starts shouting ‘Boring!’ if he doesn’t like the topic of conversation. But Rupert? The chairman who took Southampton into administration who’d dismiss you from 20 years employment without notice if he walked past and deemed you to be ‘lounging’? Also attractive.

Being an outsider

Both men are mavericks and political outsiders as only wealthy, privately-educated white men with long careers in the City of London can be. But while Farage is now so much a part of the establishment it seems odd when he’s not on Question Time, Rupert is such a rebel he kicked himself out of Reform to found his own party where he is king. Sexy.

Bigotedness of local candidate

You’re not voting for the leader. You’re voting for either Reform’s plumber Robert Kenyon, because everyone finds plumbers trustworthy and reliable and unlikely to double the price without warning, or Restore’s Rebecca Shepherd who is a woman and backed by Dragons’s Den heartthrob Duncan Bannatyne. On second thoughts, vote for the leader.

Verdict

Open bigotry, promising to reverse time to an imagined AI 1950s, a track record of broken promises; how can you choose? But in your deepest soul, you know Reform have been outclassed. Now you just have to remember which is which in the voting booth. If only their names weren’t so similar, and you not much of a reader!

Sign up now to get
The Daily Mash
free Headlines email – every weekday
privacy

The Case of the Missing Katie Price Husband: A new Sherlock Holmes mystery

SHERLOCK Holmes is always inspiring new stories, so who better to solve the mystery of Katie Price’s missing husband Lee? Or will this impenetrable case stump even the famous sleuth?

‘A most puzzling case, Watson,’ said Holmes at our lodgings in Baker Street. ‘A young bride by the name of Katie Price has had her husband snatched from her in a strangely unconvincing kidnap plot.’

Holmes sucked on his pipe thoughtfully. ‘I suggest we hail a Hansom cab willing to take us to Mrs Price’s Tudor-style rented home in Sussex.’

*****

In her drawing room, Mrs Price related the distressing tale. It was impossible for any man not to be entranced by her innocence and natural beauty.

‘I’m worried f**king sick,’ she said. ‘We’d only just got f**king married and now he’s f**king been kidnapped and they’ll probably cut his f**king fingers off and probably his knob too what the f**k is it with me and f**king men?’ 

‘A grave predicament, I agree,’ said Holmes. ‘Or is it the case that you are a dissembling shrew engaged in outrageous falsehoods for cold pecuniary gain?’ 

‘You what?’ said Mrs Price, and I too felt compelled to ask tersely what he meant by this vile accusation. ‘Come with me, Watson,’ he said. 

*****

Holmes led me to Mrs Price’s bedroom, a nightmarish study in pink. ‘What strikes you about this house, Watson?’ ‘It is tasteless?’ I ventured. ‘Yes, but you will also note a complete absence of books, an indicator of low intellect. And where might such a weak-minded individual choose to hide themselves?’ 

‘The most obvious place…?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ said Holmes. ‘Come out from under the bed, Lee.’ 

At which point a shamefaced specimen I recognised as Lee Andrews crawled out pathetically. He soon confessed all: the whole scheme had been concocted to hide the fact that their marriage was a sham, and seeking out mindless D-lister publicity was the only course of action these wretches knew.

*****

As we climbed aboard our carriage back to London, a question still vexed me. ‘Another crime solved, Holmes, but I still don’t know what alerted you to it being a pitiful charade in the first place!’ 

‘A shitty podcast,’ Holmes replied. ‘When your beloved spouse is at risk of torture and murder, who would continue with their celebrity podcast, as Mrs Price did yesterday? A podcast so lame the only guest she ever has on is her sister.’

‘Of course!’ I exclaimed. 

‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ said Holmes, as he completely fails to do in the books.

Next story ›