The Witches of Westminster

The government’s programme of anti-witchcraft legislation appears to be increasingly under threat, with shocking revelations that a top Cabinet Minister was, himself, once involved in illegal black magic, and growing pressure from pro-witchcraft groups to de-criminalise the black arts. Labour insiders fear a damaging schism in the party's leadership following the revelation that Business Secretary Lord Mandelson had, earlier in his career,used voodoo for personal gain. It has been alleged that whilst a minister in Tony Blair's government, Mandelson engaged the services of a Brazilian witch doctor to curse his political arch-rival, then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Suspicions were roused at the time when Mandelson collapsed in fits of hysterical laughter when Brown reportedly began spewing up frogs during a function at Downing Street. His skin later erupted huge weeping pustules. Labour insiders have claimed that Brown’s ordeal only ended after Tony Blair himself conducted an exorcism and performed a laying on of hands. However, Mandelson was unable to capitalise on Brown's misfortune, being forced to resign from the cabinet as a result of his involvement in certain financial irregularities.

Mandelson’s involvement in the affair was finally uncovered when the letter of thanks he had written on House of Commons headed note paper to the witch doctor recently came to light, and was published by a tabloid. “It's a potential disaster for us”, confides a Labour Party source. “Not only does it risk reigniting open political warfare between Brown and Mandelson, but it makes us look like a bunch of hypocrites!” There have also been calls from several pro-witchcraft groups for the government to ease restrictions on the use of magic, claiming that witchcraft was an integral and traditional part of British rural life. They also asserted that the low-level forms of witchcraft, such as healing and fortune-telling were no more harmful than hunting or battery-farming. The government has responded angrily to these claims, claiming that research conclusively proved that supposedly harmless activities such as tarot reading or water-divining were merely the precursors to hard-core magical practices such as voodoo and demonic materialisations.

This isn't the first time that Labour's commitment to stamping oout the Black Arts has come under threat. During the 2001 election campaign it found its witchcraft policy increasingly coming under attack, with Deputy Premier John Prescott being assaulted by an angry Wiccan in North Wales. When the wild-eyed, naked and wode daubed High Priest leapt out of the crowd and attempted to hit Prescott with his wand, aides were worried that the Deputy PM - who had once worked as a gypsy fortune-teller in a fairground - would retaliate by cursing the wiccan. There was a collective sigh of relief from the Labour leadership when Prescott confined himself to hitting the marauding pagan with his crystal ball. In another incident, the Prime Minister was harangued in Walsall by a self-proclaimed white witch, who claimed that new legislation was preventing her from using her powers to cure her sick husband., who couldn’t be treated by conventional means because of NHS waiting lists. Environmentalists also attacked the government’s witchcraft policies, claiming that mass witch-burnings in Cumbria and Cornwall had released the same level of pollutants into the atmosphere in two days as five coal-fired power-stations would in a year.