Apologies, Commentariat, I'm aware that I have been neglecting you, but just to let you know I'm in the throes of an imminent house move. It has been creeping up on me, like Christmas does - one day it is January and you are eating up the festive left overs, but before you know it people are organising parties and ordering turkeys. Again. Anyway, I'm in full panic mode. Even the post delivery functionary runs away after throwing letters into the house for fear of being bubble wrapped and boxed.
That's how the post is delivered here - the door is flung open, the parcel or letters dropped on the floor and photographed and off they go. The other day I received one of those self congratulatory emails from Royal Mail: "We have delivered your parcel, mrs ishmael, how did we do?" And there's a photo of the parcel inside the hall. Except it wasn't my hall. It was some generic white-painted hall, with absolutely no identifying features. Fortunately, the driver had several deliveries in the immediate vicinity and I was able to leap out at him before he could make his getaway. Puzzled, he got out and approached. "Look", I said, "I've got an email saying you've delivered my parcel. But you haven't."
"There's a photo, showing the delivery."
"Maybe so, but it isn't a photo of my house. And there's no parcel."
I was going on to explain about the lack of identifying features and offer to show him the photo, but he held up his finger and said;
"Stop talking now."
"What...."
"No, Stop Talking. I'm Thinking."
And so he was. I could see the Thoughts going on across the troubled brow. Abruptly, he stopped Thinking and turned to his van. "But my parcel" I wailed.
"I will go and look for it," he reassured me and drove off.
Despite the bubble wrap, I have been aware that it has been a spiffing week in politics. Everyone conspiring and lying and doing the noble thing. Who is running the country while this is going on? Why, the Civil Service, of course, like they always do. Thrown into a frenzy by the Local Elections and Plaid's Welsh triumph, the Labour lot believe that all they have to do is to find a more charismatic leader than Starmer the Nasal Borer and they won't be out of a job. As mr ishmael said: " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men think of their careers."
Joker Josh Simons - he it was who suggested that Channel smuggling gangs should be put on a barge and sent to Scotland. Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said that was "stupid" and "cringe". Labour MSP Monica Lennon said: "There should be no place in the Labour Party for these disgraceful comments." Simons apologised, saying the remarks were made "in jest". The Scottish Labour lot don't do humour. That was in February 2024. Two years later it was reported that Simons had been responsible for investigating the private affairs of journalists who had published an article unfavourable to Labour Together, a think tank he ran. Simons was accused of naming them to British intelligence, and falsely linking them to pro-Russian propaganda. On 28 February 2026, he resigned his ministerial positions, stating that while he had been cleared of breaching the Ministerial Code, the allegations had become a "distraction" from the government's work. So when gorgeous, pouting Andy Burnham needed a seat in Parliament so that he could save Britain, the obvious candidate to resign his seat and do the noble thing was Jesting Josh - being a bit of an embarrassment. Burnam's not necessarily a shoe-in, though, despite being Northern, playing football and having pretty eyes.
The problem is that Joss' sacrifice may be in vain, because the Makerfield constituency is now strongly Reform, as demonstrated in the local elections last week. It would be just too, too amusing if Burnham resigned as Mayor of Manchester, Simons resigned as MP for Makerfield and the upshot was that Nigel Farage gained another Parliamentary seat, Manchester lost a Labour Mayor and Starmer remains Prime Minister.
The other candidate who would like to be Prime Minister is Streeting - a gay Metropolitan elite Europhile. He, too has pretty eyes and is careful always to wear blue ties and a blue suit, despite being Labour, to enhance his blue eyes. 
He is chubby, charming, chubby, a good communicator, chubby, but despite all these good attributes he blew it by assuring the nation that he would have Britain back in Europe as soon as possible. Which bit of the Reform message did he not understand?
Which bit of Reform's success did he not get? Starmer said he got it, he really got it, and his work to subvert the will of the anti-European British public has been stealthy and covert. Chubby Wes, a stranger to subtlety and the fact that the powerful Red Wall - which elected the Labour lot with a majority to die for - has now turned in force to a party that is specifically anti-European, led by a man who understands the power of a pint and a fag.
And is Britain ready for a Chubby Gay Prime Minister?
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." (Helen Keller)
Kemi Badenoch, who just gets more and more Prime Ministerial, summed up Labour's problem beautifully today. She said that it is all very well having a plan to get elected, but you then have to have a plan to govern. I thought that is what a manifesto sets out to do. But, having been elected, they so far failed to meet the legitimate expectations of voters who thought they had voted for a Labour Government, they are now scratching round like Tories to find someone who can pull the trick off again.
Lugubrious Will Self on Kuenssberg looked like a hirsute Ancient Mariner who has spent the night lecturing passing sailors on the moral failings of the electorate.
His eyes said: “I have read more books than you, and frankly I regret you.”
His beard said: “I have been lost at sea since 1998.”
His tone said: “Why must I explain democracy to people who insist on participating in it.”
His eyes said: “I have read more books than you, and frankly I regret you.”
His beard said: “I have been lost at sea since 1998.”
His tone said: “Why must I explain democracy to people who insist on participating in it.”
He actually said, more or less, never mind all this pissing about with personality leadership contests, like a political Miss World - doesn't anyone realise we are at war and do something about governing this country? I have blood cancer and the Russians have hacked London's blood data.
Are they trying to get you, Will?
Interviewed in February this year by the Telegraph, he required the interviewer to sit at a safe distance on the opposite side of the room to him, whilst as a precaution against infection he sat by an open window. The interview was to promote his new book, The Quantity Theory of Morality, which he wrote in six weeks (“and it’s as tight as a trap”). He seems to have overcome his infection worries, for this morning he larged it on the Kuenssberg Show, cheek by jowl with Joss Simons, Laura and Jo Coburn, and within waving distance of Kemi, and he may have mentioned the book and the blood cancer. And the Russians.
There was a time when mr ishmael would mention, almost en passant, Will Self in these columns. Here's mr ishmael, at his most coruscatingly contemptuous.
"Nothing, neither the work of God or man, is safe from New Labour, all is now the servant of government, the land as well as the people; whence came such tyranny?
The entire apparatus of Power, as never before, skews all before it, towards its own interests. A handful of malevolent freaks owns the national press; the national broadcaster run by effete totalitarianistes nouvelle, fronted by Establishment gabshites, ensures that political coverage stops far short of reporting - much less interviewing - Difference, broadcasters and Westminster politicians all joined in a gross daisy chain, each up the other’s arse, like some devilish, de Sadeian tableau from 120 Days of Sodom, de-coupling occasionally, to shit in our faces.
The hereditary Dimblebys, arguably the most influential current affairs broadcasters - by dint of their father’s connections - studiously leaping on any voice of dissent which has not been, in advance, excluded from their dreary pretend shows and strangling it, maintaining, at all costs, a status quo of filthy, smirking, Hoonish rottenness. On next week’s Question Time the panel will consist of War, Plague, Famine and the broadcaster and writer Will Self. Clap when you are told to by the floor manager. Or else.
We now have a twice-disgraced Gilbert and Sullivanesque baron, a First Secretary of Everything, a freaky blackmailer, a man brilliant enough to run Trade and Industry like none before – Oh, Peter is so wonderful - yet too fey to understand his mortgage application form, scolding and tut-tutting us for our impertinence in questioning him; his shabby, snot-eating, putative master skulking in dark places, shredding his nails, grinding his teeth in misery, yet unembarrassed that his former tormentor now keeps him in place and keeps him in line;
 |
| Mandelson and Brown in happier days. Not gone. And not forgotten. |
this, the United Kingdom, is gay Ruritania, closet pansies bitching at one another over the national corpse; gay wives, gay husbands, a cottaging elite, gay admirals and field marshals posturing and twittering, this way and that, at the prime minister’s bidding; select committees flirting outrageously with this ghastly man, Mandelson, as though parliament was Danny le Rue’s nightclub, whilst chiding us that we should do better by them, tighten our belts, that they might slacken theirs.
............................................................
Ah, the politicians and commentators of yesteryear. Where are they now, I wonder? Wonder no longer, mrs ishmael. They are still here.
There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps
please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.
Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr
Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux
https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4
At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.
