If (You Get Away With It)

If you can cycle, followed by a driver,
And still insist you’re really very green;
Say a lot on welfare sponging skivers,
But bankers seldom come in for your spleen;
If you can fly the flag for law’n’order,
And keep at bay those questions on cocaine;
If you’re so loathed beyond the Scottish border
You know you’ll send Great Britain down the drain;
If you can dare suggest you’re our Obama,
But bash ‘big government’ like Bush and Reagan,
If you have plundered Disney’s High School drama
For your ‘We’re all in this together’ slogan:
And if you can emote on cue to conference,
Wring party capital from family grief;
If your minions alter works of reference
Just so you can win some petty beef.
If you can walk with Howard, Major, Thatcher,
Without acquiring something of the night,
If you can chum with Polish gay-rights-bashers,
Insisting that they’re not the loony right.
If you can freeze the pay of teaching staff
While claiming that you care about state schools,
If your sums are so wrong it’s a laugh:
But still the Murdoch papers fawn like fools
If you can paper over Euro-splits
And keep your weirder members off the air
Say you won’t pull the NHS to bits
And fool the lower orders that you care.
If you can fill with scare-creating nonsense
The hearts of middle Englanders still floating,
Yours are the polls, PR defeating substance
And there goes Britain, well and truly broken.