The tories are disconcerted with their recent run of crushing election defeats. They consider themselves the natural party of government, being posh and thinking they own the place. Recent leadership elections have not helped matters, having been won by a Hammer Horror extra and two bald chaps whose names have escaped Blighty. As a result the party have come up with a novel idea to prevent another leadership election faux pas. This time they’re putting a blank canvas forward to the membership.

Today a Conservative party bigwig explained the logic behind this curious turn of events. He said that it had come to their attention that many voters didn’t like the tories very much. Blighty was with him so far. ‘When we speak we don’t seem to connect with a large part of the electorate. They don’t like the way we look, seeing us as stuffy and gray. They even think we have funny voices. The answer is obvious. We need a leader who doesn’t have views, doesn’t have a face and can’t speak. What we need is a blank canvas!’

However, if the parliamentary tory party think that this move will put a stop to those negative voter responses they might be mistaken. There are already murmurings that the blank canvas put forward is not the kind available to the ordinary artist working in his garret living off of dry bread and turpentine. To put it bluntly it is a posh canvas only available to people living in Chelsea.

A Labour party official said today that ‘the tory party can’t even put forward a blank canvas for leader without irritating voters. Bloody typical. Not for them one of the canvases you can buy from discount bookshops that cost a few quid? The tory party only stand for well to do canvasses, that much is clear.’

A Lib Dem spokesman said that they don’t care about the canvas’s background, but thought it reflected badly on the tory party that only a white canvas was considered for the job.