The Sketch: Impeach the Conservatives, for very serious examples of indolence

Psephologists, focus groupies, electoral statisticians and (of course) Tories disagree with the Sketch's prediction for the next election result.

Psephologists, focus groupies, electoral statisticians and (of course) Tories disagree with the Sketch's prediction for the next election result.

This is very daring of them. Reckless, indeed, of their reputation. They all agree the government majority will be reduced and may be abolished. When you ask them why, they say something so absurd as to be meaningless. They say that the spleen in their chicken is five degrees to the right of its liver.

It's very unprofessional. Naturally no one believes them. Their chickens don't even conform to the EU directive on soothsaying. The Sketch chicken (it was delicious) says Tony Blair will return with a majority of 110 and that the Tories will gain a negligible 20 or 30 seats; fewer, if they continue to perform as they did yesterday in Parliament. It was pitiful.

Eight months out from an election. It was pathetic. If this is a party ready for government, I'm a cockerel's colon. With growing incredulity, we have come to believe that the Tories simply have no idea of the scale of the task ahead of them.

Before anything else can happen, they have to adapt Conservatism for the sprawling, brawling, bingeing horror that is modern Britain. They've got to go through all that "values" stuff that Labour did two years ago.

Then they have to reduce their policies to cretinous simplicities and then find a suitable form of words to express them so that we cretinous simpletons can understand them. They have to develop rebuttals on all sorts of levels - philosophical, political, practical, tactical. They have to be able to expose the flaw in the Government's use of "fairness" and "social justice" and "devolving control to the front line".

They need analysts to produce box files full of deadly analysis of the waste in public spending. They need to expose the statistical and moral debauchery this government has inflicted on the body politic. Serious stuff. And lots of it. And they should have started five years ago.

Meanwhile, Michael Howard spent most of Prime Minister's Questions niggling about who had been briefing against a number of ministers that no one had ever heard of.

David Willetts followed up with an Opposition Day debate, rambling around the pension problem pointing out the pretty bits. That damned chicken could have done better pecking at an alphabet.

A great brain should be able to go through the debate like a combine harvester, processing everything in its path and producing neat, perfectly formed, tightly bound arguments behind.

Pensions! The greatest financial crime of the 20th century! No larceny since Nero can touch it. An abomination on every level - moral, ethical, practical. And yet neither Mr Willetts nor Mr Howard can make the case in Parliament to excite our electoral passions. They should be able to make voters so angry that our brains explode with a dull, wet thump. It's a crime against democracy.

The Sketch calls for the Conservative Party to be impeached! Capital punishment is still on the books somewhere, for very serious examples of indolence. Impeach them!

simoncarr75@hotmail.com