New Statesman -- literary politics winners
 

No 4245
Set by Adair R Fyn
Paul Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, cites Ayn Rand as a political influence. We asked you for political manifestos inspired by other literary figures.

This week’s winners
You approached this in two ways – manifestos of actual parties and manifestos of unnamed new parties. Both were in with a chance. The winners get £20, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to David Silverman.

Plaid Cymru (Dylan Thomas)
To begin at the beginning: you can hear the houses sleeping blind as moles – in time, there will be no homeless; all will be soft-bedded in their muffled comfort: tradesmen and pensioners; schoolteacher, postman and the tidy wives. We will listen. “Nothing grows in our garden, only washing and babies”: single parents, with their snuggeries of babies, will find a tender, mollycoddling helping hand. Prosperity will strip the Welfare Hall of its widows’ weeds and give hope to our discontented boys, no longer dreaming wicked or up to no good in the wash house.
Alone and proudly independent, from verging grass-green borders to the fishing-boat-bobbing sea, our parliament will work for Wales, cold-shouldering the three-seated shack called the House of Commons, as the lilting music of our own language fires the Welsh people’s land-loving pride hidden in the surf-filled seas of their dreams.
Sylvia Fairley

Conservatives (T S Eliot)
We are the party of Ash Wednesday because, like Mrs Thatcher, we do not hope to turn again. We set our faces firmly against the politics of envy: desiring this man’s scope and that man’s gift. We weigh the profit and the loss. We are the party for those who wait in darkness. Death’s dream kingdom is not for us. We walk between the violet and the violet and various ranks of varied green because the Conservative Party is a very green party, the garden in the desert of drought. Only we can redeem the time, redeem the dream. There will be no foetid air under a Tory government or the toothed gullet of an aged shark. We are the one true veritable power. Why should we mourn the vanished power of the usual reign of other parties? It makes no sense. We have our inheritance.
Josh Ekroy

Conservatives (Matthew and Mark)
“For whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.” That’s our very own Bible speaking – Matthew and Mark. Matthew understood economics, working for what we’d call the Jewish inland revenue. Putting this into plain English, it means that God is all in favour of our policies of cutting such things as children’s benefits, pensions and all those other seductions of Satan. Don’t forget Jesus’s parable about the entrepreneur who doubled his money by investing in the market. Yes, you hecklers, you with the scraggy beards and armfuls of the Big Issue, that bit where Christ says give everything you have to the poor is clearly a textual interpolation by some left-wing academic. Whatever translation of the Bible you read, its message is clear: vote Conservative!
Barry Baldwin

Conservatives (Voltaire)
If welfare reform acts did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them. Moreover, since this is the best of all possible worlds, the Welfare Reform Act 2012 must of necessity be the best of all possible welfare reform acts. For all events are linked together for our benefit. Consider this: if we had not capped housing benefit, if we had not frozen child benefit, if we did not abolish council tax benefit, the Health-in-Pregnancy Grant, the Child Trust Fund and Education Maintenance Allowance, then you would not all now be living on fresh air, sunshine and healthy homegrown fruit and vegetables. When man was put in the Garden of Eden, he was there ut operaretur eum– so that he should work, not sit around watching The Jeremy Kyle Show all day and claiming benefits. And in the absence of jobs, one must cultivate one’s garden. Plebs.
David Silverman

(Evelyn Waugh)
And the way ahead? Well, if we have to disparage the other parties’ manifestos, then we shall do so. Politics is a dirty game, so let’s play dirty. One can always offend and insult the other parties but this should be done with style and biting wit, as savage as can be. We’re not a party for using outrageous language and bombast. We don’t need to be tub-thumping orators to get our point across. We want to be subtle, sharp and withering in our contempt for the other parties’ addle-brained, incompetent fellows, reminding them of their fecklessness and irresponsibility.
Thank goodness we have folk in our electorate of decent breeding who have the intellectual rigour and nous to understand what we’re talking about . . .
Sid Field