The new John Lewis Christmas advert that will bring Britain to its knees

This boy could wreck the entire British economy with his flightless bird madness

The new John Lewis Christmas advert is a disaster for Ed Miliband.

There, I've said it.

I've said it as a card-carrying trades unionist and Labour party member who knows a kick in the teeth when he sees one.

Not long ago, Young Ed was confidently pushing his "one man, one owl" policy onto an enthusiastic British public, who received this Harry Potter-like fiction with gusto, not stopping to think of the billions it would cost to bring into reality.

And now, with his plans already in pull swing, they've been stopped in their tracks by John Lewis and their "One boy, two penguins" Christmas advertisement.

As a result, the bottom's fallen out of the owl market, owl prices are now less than 50p for a dozen, owl houses are nothing but scrap wood, and enthusiasts daren't give their owls a friendly squeeze in case another damn egg pops out.

Like a bacon sandwich, like giving money to a street beggar, Ed takes a winning policy and deftly - yet innocently - rends it into shreds.

Ed blows it again

But the other parties can cease their gloating. David Cameron finds himself red-faced too as his copycat "One man, one polo pony" election promise shuffles off to the glue factory, its tail firmly between its legs. With stables already half-built the length and breadth of the country, on long-term private-public contracts, it's going to cost tens of billions to shut down.

And meanwhile, in the snug bar at the Jolly Xenophobe, UKIP's Nigel Farage mumbles glumly into a near empty pint glass, his party's "One man, one rabid ferret" policy in similar disarray.  Already a popular membership offer among UKIP voters, the incidence of rabies among the over-50s in the UK has already risen one-hundred-fold in the last twelve months, leading to the swamping of the National Health Service, and an emergency slash-and-burn policy by agriculture officials that has laid farmland to waste the length and breadth of the country. The cost, DEFRA and Department of Health ministers say, is beyond calculation.

But Nigel has alternatives. He opens a letter from a fan to read a single condoling word: "LEDGE", and manages a smile, For Marks and Spencer are due to unveil their Christmas advert, and the grapevine tells him it's rabid badgers.

POLITICAL SATIRE, PEOPLE! POLITICAL SATIRE!