Political column – October 30

Those folk of strange new worlds, new life and new civilisations had been left undisturbed from his boldly going for decades. Sending Captain Kirk into the final frontier again after all this time has been perceived as a humanoid provocation.

There's a cliche in science fiction in which somebody starts to act strangely and those around them quickly reach the obvious conclusion – that they have been taken over by aliens.

That, then, is the evident explanation for what has happened to Rishi Sunak or, as we should now call him, the alien being who was formerly known as Rishi Sunak.

A search of 11 Downing Street needs to be instigated immediately to free the real Rishi, who is probably locked in one of the cupboards or tied up in the cellar.

The odd behaviour and the complete conversion of a Tory Chancellor to the highest tax take anybody can remember, together with high debt and high public spending, are the giveaway clues that something is amiss.

In retrospect we can see that there have been some alien dry runs to prepare the ground for such a counter attack. There was that experiment with John Redwood which was not entirely successful, as onlookers noticed there was something strange about him, and he was finally outed because the aliens forgot that as Welsh minister they needed to programme their substitute to be able to sing the Welsh national anthem.

The traditional time to begin sneak counter attacks is at dawn on a Sunday morning, but the aliens have been canny and have chosen the run-up to Halloween to cast their spell so that it goes unnoticed.

Nevertheless voters may have detected an almost invisible sweeping change on the Tory backbenches as one by one they have fallen into the alien grip, with the victims appearing before the cameras to act as if high tax and high public spending is part of fundamental Conservative ideology.

Those human Tory MPs who have managed to hold out against the bodysnatchers don't know who among them is a human, and who is an alien, and are living in disguise in fear of discovery, pretending to go along with it.

The aliens of the 21st century are more sophisticated than their predecessors. They don't go for ray guns and old-hat things like that. Their weapon is far more ambitious – national bankruptcy.

It is likely that they considered taking over Boris Johnson's brain as well, but I imagine they decided not to bother as they didn't need to.

The extra-terrestrials have had some quiet tactical victories under the cover of the pandemic, with the test and disappear-without-trace fiscal investment which has cost so many billions that people have lost count, and Rishi's fraud-friendly furlough scheme which promoted a vast army of phantom workers named Mick Mouse and Don Duck.

This is a threat which goes beyond national borders. In France, president Macron has been transformed from an inoffensive investment banker to an alien Brit-bashing irrational power-crazed warmonger. Unless he was that all along. Surely not.

When David Cameron and Donald Tusk warned us that Brexit could spark conflict in Europe, I thought they must very unfairly be pointing the finger at Germany (1870, 1914, 1939), which is today a modern, peaceable nation.

However thanks to the actions of madman Macron it is now clear that during our entire time within the EU we were being held hostage by hostile states during which we were only able to appease their hatred by forking out regular ransom payments and tremulously describing our captives as "friends and partners" in a feeble attempt to curry favour.

In all the best sci-fi movies, a saviour comes along to save the world. Step forward, Sir Keir Starmer. Pro business. Pro lower taxes. Pro fiscal responsibility. Sir Keir is the man to re-establish Conservative values in politics. Or is he all part of the extra-terrestrial conspiracy?

At such times of crisis there is one wise head we can rely on and trust to do the right thing to save humanity.

It is time to make William Shatner the leader of the Labour Party. And he's not American, by the way, but Canadian. Incidental fact.

Or, if he won't take it, there's that Islington allotment enthusiast.