Peter Jones

Socrates meets Keir Mather, the new Labour MP for Selby

[Getty Images] 
issue 29 July 2023

SOCRATES: I was walking back from the gymnasium when I saw Keir Mather, the new MP for Selby, on his way there. I had been told he was young and good-looking and went to a world-famous Oxford College, so I have been very keen to meet to him.

Hello, O Keir.

MATHER: And you too, Socrates. But what, therefore?

SOCRATES: Now that you are an MP, you must tell me what justice is. For that surely is a lawmaker’s main concern.

MATHER: Enough verbal games. Justice is defined by the laws. My job is to solve problems in the real world.

SOCRATES: Are Tory laws, then, just?

MATHER: Of course they are not!

SOCRATES: But you said…

MATHER: And I will change them and, I quote, by ‘my ability to process information and communicate it to people effectively, and to analyse complex problems and find frameworks through which to implement solutions’.

SOCRATES: Splendid – crystal clear! But come now, here is another problem to solve: what is a woman?

MATHER: Obviously, anyone who asserts that they are.

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