Image: Wikicommons
By Chris Norris
The three monkeys of Japanese Buddhist-influenced folklore embodied the precepts ‘see no evil’ (cover your eyes), ‘hear no evil’ (block your ears), and ‘speak no evil’ (muzzle yourself). The traditional teaching takes the message straight: obey these rules and you won’t have evil thoughts. The (perhaps) more cynical and mainly Western version says: if that’s what you do then you’re promoting evil and thereby doing it yourself by making sure you don’t know and then act on what’s afoot. This is a poem about someone – the lately elected UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham – who sort-of sees and hears, and who audibly speaks, yet who has, in a very short time, turned out morally impervious to the gist of what he himself registers and even says.
I’m ‘hear no evil’ Andy, nickname dear
To me who’ll always turn a willing ear
To Netanyahu, Trump, or any near-
By arms-trade rep with lots of killing-gear
He’ll sell us cheap and so leave my way clear
To suck up to them both by saying ‘we’re
Your biggest buddies now, so never fear:
I’ll give the IDF a secret steer
On special ops, make sure to spread some smear
On anti-war protesters when they rear
Their hydra-heads, and have no miscreant jeer
At me for not outdoing old Sir Keir
In stacking up the war-crimes, year-on-year,
Till Starmer, Blair and Burnham all appear
As monkey-kin: ‘no evils we can hear’.
And then there’s ’see no evil’ – yes, that’s me!
There’ll be no end of things I just shan’t see,
Or can’t, or won’t, like when Home Secretary
Mahmood brings in her latest cruel decree
To ensure no immigrants can do what she
Brought off to climb the parliamentary tree
While stamping on their fingers; or agree
Just not to notice as the spending-spree
On all that Israel-destined weaponry
Means massive cuts elsewhere; or leave them free,
Those oil execs, to drill in the North Sea
While forests burn. I tell you, honestly:
Selectavision’s simply got to be
Best place to get your eyes fixed for a fee
Well spent, though hefty, if it brings the key
To what the left call gross hypocrisy
But I call boss-class solidarity.
And ‘speak no evil’? Well, I’m not as meek
As him, the left’s anointed saintly geek,
Old Jeremy, who scarcely deigns to speak
An evil word of them, the Mandy clique,
Who brought him down and – on this point I seek
Indulgence – who were shrewd enough to sneak
Yours Truly, when Sir Keir went up the creek,
Straight into No 10 with scarce a squeak
From those who’d long held noses at the reek
Of ‘Old’ New Labour rising, leak by leak,
From swamps I’ve fished in during my first week
As second shoo-in, one whose winning streak
In mayoral politics now lets me speak
And bring about such evils as no tweak
Of phrasing need conceal since they’re too weak,
Those last few Labour socialists, to eke
It out, that creed of theirs that’s now all Greek
To me whose sole response to prospects bleak
Is: dump that lot, but keep the message sleek.
