Threadbare Suit Fades Away

An empty suit is finding the opposition front benches a bit of a bore after the thrills associated with heading Gordon Brown's Ministry of Dawn Raids and Deportations, and is therefore standing down to facilitate a "fresh start"; or, in Standard English, to make room for more vigorous symptoms of the same disease. Britain's leading liberal newspaper refers to the suit as "one of the greatest survivors of postwar Labour politics", which is journalese for "one of the most colourless apparatchiki to just about warm a Ministry chair". Aside from playing assistant second fiddle to Blair while the Reverend postured and sermonised us into Iraq, and using terrorism as an excuse to remove civil liberties (or "putting the fight against terrorism ahead of civil liberties" as Britain's leading liberal newspaper hath it), the suit will most likely be remembered for its useful advice on female attire. The suit intends to write its memoirs at some point, possibly attempting to cash in on something written by Gerald Kaufman; although despite thirteen years in various undignified positions on the Blairite sofa the memoirs will not be "kiss and tell". Whatever it may have done to the families of asylum seekers, the lives of foreigners or the backs of camels, the suit does not believe in breaking confidences, which in view of its long and glorious career is entirely understandable; one does not tell where the bodies are buried when one's fingerprints are all over the spade.