Today's Spot the Difference Competition

There are very few differences. Can you spot them?

Welcome to Theresa's Post Brexit Fascist Paradise!

Der Fuhrer May speaks: That conference speech in full.

When I came to Birmingham this week the biggest question on my mind was 'How can I make it look like I give a toss about Britain when all I want is to save the tory party from electoral oblivion?"

Do I have a plan? Yes, I do.

Am I willing to sacrifice my cabinet colleagues in the process? Yes, indeed.

Is Boris Johnson a useful distraction from the Brexit fiasco? Yes, that's why I appointed him.

But the big question is what is my vision for the tory party? My philosophy? My approach?

Today I will churn out some rehashed bullshit from old Ed Milliband speeches to answer that question as indirectly as possible.

Because it won't be easy. There is a rocky road ahead. There will be problems, but nothing we can't overcome by bluster and nationalist rhetoric. We've been on the ropes before, but we've always fought back, and won. Because we are a party of fighters. We fight each other like no other party. And we are a party of equality, even if some of us are more equal than others. Believe in that and great things can happen. Great changes can occur. Except in my cabinet, of course, which remains mainly millionaire middle aged old Etonians.

Last June we saw a quiet revolution. I don't mean the noisy one that botched the EU referendum result or ended Boris's impertinent attempt to replace David Cameron. I mean the one that got me into Number 10 after pretending to support Remain but keeping so quiet about it I was not unacceptable to the Brexiteers. And since then the media have been invaluable in keeping quiet about My Little Coup, as I like to call it. That's the way we do things in the tory party. That's the sort of people we are.

And so my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be PM was grasped with both hands. Because tories are a party of opportunists, first and foremost. We never go off script when it's time to sell the party or buy an election. Like lying about bringing the deficit down, creating more slave wages jobs and creating more millionaires when the number of foodbanks continues to rise. We pretend to spend money on the NHS when it's clearly going down the pan, or abolishing crime when prisons are full to bursting. And one of the greatest Bullshitters in the last 25 years has been David Cameron, so let's hear it for him.

But now it's time for change again. Brexit provides us with great opportunity.  Not just for personal enrichment but the chance to consolidate tory power by removing those pesky regulations that have held us back in the area of workers and human rights. Knock on any door and you will see how discontented people are. But there's still work to do. They won't work for peanuts while they aren't actually starving. So Brexit gives us the chance to kick out all the foreign firms providing them with jobs. To kick out the foreign doctors who care for them and keep our NHS running. Only then can we sell it off to the American private healthcare companies amassed on the border and get a seat on the board.

Of course people won't vote for that unless we convince them we are their champions. So watch while I and the tame media convince them we are the party of workers. Let's rewrite history together so they forget who destroyed our manufacturing base, removed the power of trade unions and allowed zero hour contracts to become the norm. We'll pretend that allowing selection in new Grammar Schools will bring a brave new world of choice when only a tiny few will actually be chosen and the rest can rot in crumbling hell holes. We'll talk about fairness and equality while turning the usual blind eye to tax avoidance and our non-dom billionaire donors without whom the tory party would be nothing.

Because Brexit is about becoming Britain again. It's about controlling our borders and keeping out foreigners, and I won't allow divisive nationalists to spoil that.

We in the tory party can be more UKIP than UKIP. Not out of xenophobia, although that's a pretty good reason, but because by stealing their votes we consign the opposition to oblivion forever.

Because we are the Nasty Party, and let's never forget it.

Guest Post: Kezia Dugdale - a Clarification

Gordon i get up in the morning to fight for Labour values it's very simple Gordon the SNP is destroying Scotland crushing the poor under its nazi jackboot targeting the most vulnerable in our society that's why i will always fight for a Labour government at Westminster to give hope to all those struggling families all those young people struggling on zero hour contracts by raising taxes and renewing Trident it's what gets me out of bed in the morning Gordon and that's never going to change

it's not confusing i stand by what i said Gordon my position hasn't changed i'm determined to fight for a Labour government and to do that we must have unity and a leader who can unite us that's what all of us want Jeremy has been elected leader he has to be the leader that leads and unites us if we want to see a Labour government the party has made its choice now it's up to him to convince the voters i said i didn't think Jeremy could achieve that and i stand by that it's written down but now we have to unite and move forward to get a Labour government and i will support Jeremy yes i do think he can unite us and lead us to victory Gordon so we can fight for all the Labour values all of us so desperately want to see to help all the struggling young people on SNP zero hours contracts by raising taxes and renewing Trident but we can't do that in Opposition

of course i want to see a Labour government and we won't get that unless we unite behind Jeremy even if he isn't the man to unite us it's what we need to do to get out of bed in the morning Gordon i'm tired of all the misery the SNP is bringing to the people of Scotland banging on about indyref2 at a time like this and swingeing cuts and this horrible tory government we need to get behind Jeremy and take the fight to the SNP Gordon yes I do think Jeremy is the man for the job even though i supported Owen Smith it's what gets me out of bed in the morning

Play Indyref2 Bingo!

Cut out and keep this handy bingo card so from now on you will be ready to play during First Minister's Questions (or any political debate including the SNP).

Indyref 2	Get on with            the day job	Oil prices
GERS figures	Indyref 2	Get on with               the day job
Get on with  the day job	GERS figures	Get on with                the day job
Indyref 2	Get on with           the day job	GERS figures

Star prize - this delightful "Getting on with the Day Job" tee shirt. 

Runner up wins a night on the town with Professor Adam Tomkins.

Losers win two nights on the town with Professor Adam Tomkins.

Guest Post: Owen Smith

Look, I want to clear this up once and for all. Because there have been some pretty scurrilous accusations flying around about me on the interweb. Lies mostly. Can I just say here and now I am not nor ever have been a sexist. I'm just a normal 'wife and two kids' kind of bloke, and like all blokes I've a tendency to put my foot in my mouth where the ladies are concerned.  Let's face it, they take offence at practically anything, don't they? Even someone as sensitive as I am. The comment about Nicola Sturgeon stuffing her mouth with enormous gobstoppers was meant to be a bit of harmless banter. I mean, I don't even know the woman, but she seems alright in a mouthy kind of way. They seem to go for that in Scotland, don't they? But it was certainly not meant to imply she should shut up. I doubt if anything a bloke like me said would ever make her shut up, to be honest. But I am in no way shape or form a sexist. No way. I'm a radical feminist since way back.

Look, it's not that I don't like Jeremy. He's a decent sort of bloke and I respect that. He might not be the type I'd want to socialise with, I mainly hang out with Pfizer executives, but I can see his heart's in the right place. But this is politics and as Tony once said, if your heart's in the right place you should get a transplant. And there's a lot of sense in that.

My vision for Labour is a strong party of government. I didn't come into politics to be in opposition. Shame I couldn't get selected for the Tory party since they seem to be a shoo-in these days, despite all their awful policies. But as Labour leader I would make the party as good as the Tories.  Because there's no point in having principles if no one ever votes for you. Not that nobody votes for us, but the right of kind of people aren't voting for us and under Jeremy's leadership they never will.  So it's all well and good Jeremy standing by his principles, they're just the wrong principles. That should be obvious.

I resigned from Jeremy's cabinet because I could see he was unelectable. If a party wants to be electable it must have a leader who is electable. And Jeremy just isn't. It doesn't matter how many hundreds of thousands rally to his public meetings, that's just a fact and I've never been one to shirk an unpleasant truth.

Ed Balls and the Perilous State of British Politics

So Ed Balls was on Strictly last night.

I'd add a picture, but it's probably better if you try and imagine it.
Lots of unreal showbiz glitter and into the middle steps a podgy middle aged man with a bad hair cut and a suit he didn't choose for himself.  He bears the uneasy grin of one not accustomed to being the centre of such manufactured hype. You wonder what he can be thinking as his scantily clad partner guides him across the floor.  Is he thinking back to his days as a left wing firebrand Labour activist, knocking on doors and standing on street corners to bring hope to his party's working class voters? Or is he thinking how proud Tony would be now he has joined the ranks of the self serving political hasbeens in selling himself to the highest bidder?

And however pathetic it is to see someone like Balls, who still manages to pop up on the Andrew Marr show espousing serious political opinions the day after he has prostituted himself on a tacky celeb fest like Strictly, that's not the most depressing part of this story. It's the fact that no one seems to see any harm in this blurring of the line between serious and trivial.  Politics has crossed over into just another harmless branch of mind numbing entertainment, it would seem.

Not that this is new. Boris Johnson's been getting himself invited onto comedy shows since time immemorial. But go back far enough and it's hard to imagine our politicians conducting themselves like this. Would Harold Wilson have gone on 'What's My Line' or Harold McMillan on 'Juke Box Jury'? Maybe if the price had been right. And if the BBC is paying that much, maybe the license payers should be informed.

Personally I think it's all part of an overarching plot to dumb down politics. It's hard to take someone's opinion on monetary policy seriously when you've just watched them tango to the whooping appreciation of a studio audience. But with Balls, it's questionable how seriously anyone took him before this. The electorate did after all kick him out in last year's general election. And we all have to make a living, I suppose.

Whatever happened to...The BBC

Oo-er, I've got a man's genitals, you know.

I'm depressed this morning. No, it's not the weather, or the economy or even the Team GB self congratulatory wankfest going on in the meeja. It's the news that Mrs Brown's Boys has been voted the best sitcom ever in a Radio Times poll.

Les Dawson suffering from the shishkebabs.

Now, to be fair, I've never watched Mrs Browns Boys. The trailers are bad enough. I don't much go for studio audiences whooping at the sight of a fat middle aged drag act. I went through all that in the Seventies. Remember when the limited TV schedules offered nothing better than references to Mrs Slocombe's pussy, and all that Carry On seaside humour that defined British post war entertainment? I confess I even enjoyed some of it. Les Dawson got the character to a tee, and Lily Savage had the earthy one liners to carry it off.

Mrs Slocombe 

But that was then, and I'd hoped, in the years since Spaced and The Office, that British television sitcoms had finally grown up. Apparently not. The Beeb would rather look back to what was (barely) funny forty years ago than take a risk on breaking new ground. I find this depressing because it's not what the Corporation was created for and we deserve better.

And this was compounded by (another) new reality show.  The programme planning at Broadcasting House these days seems to consist of "Who can we follow around with a film crew for cheap entertainment? Police? Dunnit. Debt collectors? Dunnit. Benefit scroungers? Dunnit. I know, how about sweat shop workers?"

And that's pretty much what Britain's Hardest Workers is. This latest piece of nonsense tries to dignify its poverty porn by calling it a 'sociological experiment'. It's kind of a cross between Undercover Boss and British Bake Off - the elimination element giving the lie to its 'experiment' line right away. Time was when the BBC led the world in fearless expose journalism, lifting the lid on the unscrupulous practices that enable such exploitation of low wage employees. Today we get yet another glib reality show, sniggering at its contestants' inept attempts to do a job they have not been trained for.

Whatever happened to the BBC?