If, like me, you’ve watched this general election campaign with growing despair, you’ll know there’s no outcome on Friday morning which will save the nation’s soul.
However, there is one option that has been criminally neglected by our celebrity obsessed media. And that’s a person with the purest soul in the nation. A person who shuns celebrity. A person truly beyond reproach.
And that person – or dare I say ‘hero’ – is Sir Alastair Cook.
Want your politicians squeaky clean? This titan of modern Britain doesn’t even sweat.
Want your politicians to transcend racism? Choose the candidate who’s friends with both Michael Klinger and Moeen Ali.
Want your politicians to get on with the daily grind of leading from the front? You won’t catch Sir Alastair hiding away in a fridge.
So I tell you, my brothers and sisters, this election doesn’t have to be about choosing the least worst option. Don’t choose hard left activism; choose the nation’s favourite left-hander instead. And eschew the excesses of the hard right; choose a man who knows right from wrong.
I know what you’re going to say. “Sir Alastair has no political experience”. But experience be damned.
How much Test experience did Cook have when he made a century on debut in India? I’ll tell you how much. None.
And how much captaincy experience did he have before ascending to his rightful place as England cricket captain? None.
Experience simply doesn’t matter when you’re born to lead.
Alastair is the ideal person to bring the country together. Forget rumours of a hostile environment down under in 2013. Kevin Pietersen said some damning stuff but it was clearly just banter.
What’s more, Prime Minister Cook would rescue the economy almost singlehandedly. The industrial heartlands of the north, for example, will be doing cartwheels when they win the contract to produce his iron rods.
But I understand that you need more than rhetoric. You’re hungry for substance and need some concrete policies.
So how do the following sound? All of them have been independently costed by the IFS (The Institute For The Fucking Superb) and they’re all 100% deliverable.
→ Nationalisation of the ECB (it’s been failing the nation for far too long)
→ New tax on Giles Clarke’s gin consumption to fund record £100 billion investment in NHS
→ End freedom of movement and replace it with a ‘Super Series’ points based system
→ Tougher sentences for Ishant Sharma and Ryan Harris
→ Revoke article 50 and trigger article 100+ thirty three times
→ Help the environment by making weasels a protected species
→ Free copy of The Deer Hunter starring Robert De Niro for every household in the land
These common sense measures, which are both popular and practical, would soon transform our lamentable land. They might even resuscitate the whole woebegone world.
So twat the Tories. Lamp Labour. Garrotte the Greens. And give the Lib Dems a good licking. Do your democratic duty on Thursday 12th December and vote for Sir Alastair Cook – the master Chef with all the electoral ingredients.
James Morgan
Maybe he’s kidding us all and lying low waiting for his New Years honours to become Lord Cook of Chelmsford, so he can galvanise the House of Lords to his Machiavellian plans for an ECB takeover, when he will petition for the imprisonment of all known ‘Harrisons’ and ‘Graves’, just to make sure he’s got the right ones and the abolishion of the number ‘100’ from the English language, replacing it with ‘century’.
As Lord Kenny of Everett used to say, ‘it’s all in the best possible taste’.
One issue: being unable to sweat has a recent chequered history. Otherwise a far better suggestion than either Johnson or Corbyn (not difficult).
Prerequisite for visits to many parts of the old empire though. Full dress uniform required at all times. The only thing stiffer than an upper lip was a collar. Play up play up and play the game!
Nice bloke, no wallop though. Need a bit of old fashioned slugging it out now. I’d go for a bit of “sock it to them”, perhaps Ben Stokes? Even better get David Warner on lone to sort things out. He’d terrify Jeza, Borris and the whole sorry lot of them. Whimps out I say-now!
Two things James – 1. Cook was England U19 captain and 2. given the amount of South Africans playing in this country, the opposition leader, Kevin Pietersen, will have their votes, so I’m afraid he’s not left with much. He hasn’t come out in support of the Hundred (not that I know of, but my guess is he will take the coin on offer to commentate), so he won’t get their vote. The ECB adore him because “he is of the right stock”, so he has those. When he retired, he still honored his Essex contract (respect), so he has that County sewn up. Not England’s greatest captain, so he can forget the other Counties for support. Played the most boring innings in recent memory in Melbourne, so he has lost the overseas voters.
I dunno, hung parliament I’d reckon…………
I am surprised that you support a ‘Leftie’ like Cook. He is a dull batsman. a dull as ditchwater TMS summarizer and a boring captain. Apart from that, he is a nice fella.
“This titan of modern Britain doesn’t even sweat”.
Let’s leave Prince Andrew out of this…
I don’t think that Cook would be oven ready.
On the bright side, that should be the end of the Kolpaks.
On the less bright side, the ECB and other major cricketing powers have pillaged world cricket to such an extent that they can buy all the talent for a song anyway. So in terms of the lack of quality in world cricket it does not make a discernible difference anymore.
In response to the votes lent by our good people of the North, he could open up some decommissioned sites and start to reproduce Inner Steel.
The Perth Test was yet another case study in why Test cricket is doomed.
The home Big Three team strolled to victory with a performance by a guy who should be playing for someone else papering over their cracks. The away team were woefully under-acclimatised and crumbled. All over in four days (who needs the official introduction of four day Tests when they exist de facto?) and a Big Three monopoly on the WTC moves a step closer.
I’d have a bit more sympathy for NZ if they hadn’t prepared such awful pitches for the England matches and had some fresh experience of playing on a surface with a bit of bounce.
Main bowler injured.. their wild paceman injured mid game… one opener who is worse than when England tried Roy or heaven forbid Bairstow in the top 6…
NZ just don’t have any depth and are a workmanlike team. No shame in it.. why should they prepare wickets to suit Oppos ..England are a poor side and even poorer when its not on feather beds or green tops .
Aus are a ok side at home, especially with the emergence of manus
Test cricket is not doomed because of Nz. It’s doomed because boards are allowing white ball players to be herelded as world class in red ball when they simply aren’t. England and India are terrible for it. Just look at England over the last 5 years… So many white ball players who avg 30’s after many many tests and yet are still kept on central contracts as talks up the odd time they do perform. That is your main issue.. no actual red ball player sin any quantity or quality