Starmer: I'll bore all Britain's problems to death

'I urge Labour not to replace me as leader with anyone like Burnham or Streeting until they seriously compare their abilities to solve Britain's problems with my own,' droned Sir Keir.

'I have an amazing talent," he continued to mumble, nasally. "I can sit opposite a hardened teetotaller and talk to them and within two minutes they're wondering whether 10 am is an OK time to start drinking.

'Within ten minutes, they are well and truly comatose.

'That's how I have been able to spend the past two years boring Britain's problems into submission. Rachel from Accounts has given me wonderful assistance in her turgid, uninspired approach to running government finances.

'Your great fear should be that any new leader will come in with a racket and stir all these problems up again, just when they were thinking of wandering off and troubling some other nation, instead.'

Cabinet prepares for release of more Mandelson documents

I want a Swatch outstrips Cost of Living as UK's top crisis

All the pain and suffering of life in modern Britain has been laid bare as the country's poorest jostle and fight to hand over £335 each for a plastic watch.

"Sure, I'm on benefits and life is hard," said Dwayne Scally, jumping the queue outside a Swatch store in Liverpool to get a coveted "Royal Pop" pocket watch.

"But life will be unbearable unless I get one of them mini-clock things to show me mates down the pub."

"Then I'll flog it on eBay, probably, as well as the other two that I intend to nick," Scally confided.

Labour leadership hopefuls Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting have all promised a special Swatch allowance to anyone who's desperate to buy one of these absurdly overpriced toy-like timepieces and who promises to vote Labour in future by-elections.

image from Google Gemini