“Trust me, Labour’s election manifesto isn’t just about going back to the Seventies in terms of its policy proposals, they actually want to recreate the Seventies,” claims Rhod Scullet. Political Editor of right wing rag the Daily Excess. “They want to bring the whole ‘decade that fashion forgot’ back – kipper ties, flared trousers and platform soles will all become compulsory1” According to the journalist, the manifesto, recently launched by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, contains several clauses in the small print, overlooked by the rest of the media, which make clear the party’s desire to, quite literally, turn back the clock in Britain. “Everybody else has focused on their proposed re-nationalisation of the railways, to recreate British Rail, and of the power industry, to recreate the old electricity and gas boards of the seventies, but it goes way beyond that,” he explains. “They want to recreate the whole culture of the seventies – digital TV will be out and we’ll be back to just three TV channels. And they’ll all close down before midnight!” Scullet also alleges that, under a Labour government, radio stations would have highly restrictive play lists imposed upon them, forcing them to play strict quotas of seventies music: at least twenty minutes of Prog Rock every hour, ten minutes of Glam Rock and fifteen minutes of Heavy Rock, for instance.

Other measures supposedly proposed in the Labour’s so called ‘Back to the Seventies’ manifesto include the reintroduction of long boozy lunch hours, multiple tea breaks and knocking off early on Fridays. “Longer, alcohol fuelled lunch breaks will become a legal requirement,” says Scullet. “Employers who refuse to allow their workers spend at least two hours in the pub every lunch time will face prosecution!” Business leaders have, predictably, reacted angrily to such proposals, claiming that they will result in a dangerous decline in productivity. “Combined with the numerous tea-breaks these lefty bastards want to force on us, not to mention the legalised early knocking off for the weekend, these policies could result in the loss of hundreds of man hours a week,” declared CBI Assistant Director Sir Hugh Twissleford-Hunslet, speaking to the Excess as he left a five course, three hour business lunch, paid for on expenses. “This will catastrophically undermine our competitiveness compared to our foreign rivals. Quite frankly, if people have enough non-productive time in the day to eat, drink and enjoy themselves, then they aren’t working hard enough – they aren’t being paid to live, they are being paid to work.”

The CBI is also concerned by Scullet’s claims that Labour is also aiming to recreate the seventies by introducing compulsory ‘strike days’ for workers, with all union members entitled to withdraw their Labour for at least five days every month. To avoid crippling the economy entirely, Scullet claims, there will be a rolling programme of compulsory strike action throughout British industry, to ensure that only one major sector at a time is on strike. “It’s absolutely outrageous!” fumed Twisselford-Hunslet, speaking to the Excess as he prepared to depart for his annual, one month spring break in the South of France. “This really would take Britain back to the ‘bad old days’, when we were losing thousands of man hours a week due to irresponsible strike action. And what did those strikers achieve, eh? Higher wages and more time off – did that really make them happy? Obviously not, or they would never have vote for Thatcher in ‘79.”

Among the most bizarre measures proposed by the manifesto, according to Scullet, is the reintroduction of seventies-style facial hair, from sideburns to handle bar moustaches. “Even the loons who drafted this farrago don’t expect men to be able to immediately grow such things,” he says. “Instead, they are proposing the production and distribution of subsidised fake facial hair during an interim period, along with complimentary kipper ties.” He has also claimed that the manifesto puts forward Labour’s plans to revive the British car industry – by putting seventies cars back into production in state-owned factories. “If Corbyn has his way, we’ll all be driving around in the worst cars ever made,” he scoffs. “Forget today’s economical diesels, people will find themselves forced to buy Austin Allegros and Hillman Imps!” Other barmy ideas Scullet claims to have seen in the ‘That Seventies Manifesto’ include putting children’s TV back into the hands of peadophile presenters and slashing the budget of Doctor Who to its seventies level, complete with cardboard sets and rubber monsters. But why would the Labour Party want to return Britain to the 1970s? Scullet believes that the answer is obvious. “It was an era when Labour governments could get elected on the back of too powerful unions, which were holding the country to ransom,” he says. “They see it as a golden age when lunatic lefty liberal types with stupid beards could get government subsidies to pursue their crackpot schemes to teach dogs to play pianos and the like. Not to mention the fact that it was a time when they could win an EU referendum.”

Scullet’s claims have drawn stiff criticism from rivals. “Quite apart from the fact that nobody else can find this stuff in the Labour manifesto, would it really be such a bad thing to go back to the seventies?” asks Henry Vittlers, Political Editor of the Sunday Bystander. “After all, wasn’t it a decade when people could afford to buy their own homes and for those who couldn’t, there was plentiful public housing? We actually had manufacturing industries and a functioning National Health Service, not to mention the prospect of North Sea oil revenues – subsequently squandered by Thatcher on having to pay unemployment benefits to the tens of thousands her policies put on the dole queues.” Vittlers is also keen to point out that, in the seventies, the UK was still in the forefront of technological innovation. “It was the era when we were able to produce supersonic airliners,” he says. “We also had a Navy with working ships, an air force with planes and an army with soldiers!” He also believes that the idea of putting seventies British cars back into production, wouldn’t be that crazy. “There’s a real nostalgia for those cars now,” he says. “Many are seen as classics and there’s potentially a significant market out there retro classics.” Indeed, Vittlers is highly enthusiastic about the prospect of a return to the seventies: “Everything was better then – we might have more TV channels now, but they are full of shit, the three we had then were full of quality. Not to mention the music – bring back Bowie, Lou Reed, Slade and Pink Floyd! Most of all, back then, the future looked so much better than it has turned out to be! Yeah man, vote Labour for a return to a better future!”