It stunts your growth

Fraser Nelson muses on the '1970s Moscow' mindset of Balls and his gang.

It's no mystery, Fraze. Moving as you do in adult intellectual circles among free thinkers of all sorts, I daresay you have been spared the unpleasant necessity of close acquaintance with the compulsive political masturbators of the Bullyingonanist Club or you would know that arrested development is a common symptom on the Left.

Take the current Labour leadership. A tight little, um, circle, who have inhabited their private intellectual comfort bubble ever since that first teenage political surge ('I joined the Labour Party at 16') when there was no-one but their mates to turn to for mutual gratification.

Egging each other on (a less offensive term than the one that springs to mind) these frustrated, aggressive, sport-obsessed, hormone-driven, permanently-teenage political gangsters have grown older without developing the normal sensitivity to the protocols of polite society. Indeed, they think it perfectly acceptable to 'moon' at those they scorn as 'middle class', the majority who do not have to rely on their Bullyingonanist Club brethren for fulfilment but engage in normal adult political intercourse.

Older now but no wiser, the political adolescents of the left know they know everything. They occasionally attract posh totty who hang around giggling and squirming naughtily at the sort of dirty-politics talk which would shock the High Mistress. And don't get me started on high mistresses.

Though vain, the Bullyingonanists are not actually the least self-aware. They pleasure each other in public, blind to the the revulsion on the faces of the voters and deaf to hoots of derision. Yes, political masturbation makes you deaf, too, to all but the loudest of electoral explosions.

But then, one can sympathise, in a way. I mean, why grow up and face cold political reality when mutual gratification is assured just as long as you stick (oh, yes - sorry) together to keep the grown-ups and the rival gang out of the room and carry on pleasuring each other so deliciously?

And if stunted intellectual growth is your only problem, no worries. You will be Leaders (if only of an army of other deluded political dwarves). You are The Brothers. You know that it is historically inevitable that it is your destiny, as the Bullyingonanist Club, to rule the world, bonded for life by ties going right back to the best years of your lives.

It is a proud heritage and if they are challenged they simply flourish their beloved Red Flag. With the other hand.