In Competition No. 3014 you were invited to submit a love poem written by one contemporary politician to another.
Virginia Price Evans, writing on behalf of Jeremy Corbyn, channelled Betjeman in a bid to woo the PM: ‘Theresa M May, Theresa M May, I sigh and I die for our special day…’. Frank Upton’s Jeremy Hunt clearly thought that a spot of Eliot might melt the heart of Baroness Primarolo: ‘In the room the women come and go/ Talking of “Dawn Primarolo”…’. And W.J. Webster imagined Nicola Sturgeon making eyes across the Channel at M. Macron:
The Auld Alliance, sealed long since,
Served both our nations well:
As two made one again, my prince,
We’d give the English hell.
The winners, who were tricky to choose, take £25. Frank McDonald pockets £30.
Wee gallus queen without a croon,
More canny than this auld buffoon,
A feisty fish,
I oft-times look ye up and doon
And sweetly wish.
Ah, you are blest compared wi’ me,
A fighter fair for a’ tae see.
You blaw yer nose and folk agree;
You dae nae wrong.
An angel wi a law degree,
You sing ma song.
From Alec do these verses come
Tae Scotland’s heid from Scotland’s bum.
Frank McDonald
Dear Tessa, I’m Putin, the Beast from the East.
I’m crazy about you. I’m rising like yeast.
I’m virile as Satan, as hard as the knout.
I’m the hoodlum your mother forewarned you about.
You may fool other men with your ladylike pose,
But I know that you throb from your top to your toes
When you meet a wrong number who’s up for romance
With Byronic appeal and a nuke in his pants.
We are neither vanilla — you have your shoes
And I have some military widgets I use —
So together we’ll cover the spectrum of sex
From the ferally raw to the weird and complex.
Forget Trump and Macron, they’re weaklings and fools.

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