John Cruddas told reporters that it was essential the Labour Party take “as long as humanly possible” to choose between the two drinks: “When we do finally sit down, we need to be clear in our minds what we’re all about. Are we a tea party, or are we a coffee party? What does our choice imply? What does it mean to be a tea-drinking Labour supporter in the 21st Century? Is coffee a Tory drink? There are so many questions that remain unanswered. We have to capture the beverage zeitgeist, and that cannot be done in just a couple of months.”

“Personally, I’m neither a tea nor a coffee man and I won’t be drinking either, but I fully support the Labour Party’s long-term beverages strategy.”

The Beverage For a Socialist Future document outlines the procedure for selecting the drink available for the next Labour meeting, which includes an all-membership ballot to take place towards the end of 2010, with regional hustings in the run-up to the first ballot. Several rounds of voting will take place, representing 10% of the final decision, after which the unions will be consulted, and finally the Labour MPs present at the meeting. Labour Party officials have not ruled out the possibility of adding other beverages to the ballot sheets in the goodness of time, and say that they need “to meditate” over the ever-confusing list of options.

Leadership candidate David Milliband weighed into the argument, saying “Tea is tea, that’s fine. We’re fine with that. No bugger drinks green tea, and we’ve only got PG Tips anyway. But coffee’s not just coffee any more, is it? I mean, what happens if someone says – hey, I’m a latte guy but not a cappuccino guy? And who knows the difference between a latte and coffee with milk? Frappuccino? Flat white? We’re entering dangerous territory here, so it’s quite right that we should take our time over this decision. Has no one thought about hot chocolate?”

Ed Milliband said exactly the same thing to reporters afterwards, but added that everything he drank was “Fairtrade” only, which received a few “aw”s from the audience.

The Condemocrats have laughed off accusations that they face the same indecision problems, by mixing tea and coffee together and calling it “teaffee”. David Cleggeron spoke of a “new beverage situation”, telling reporters that “people are sick of us telling them what we’re going to drink, and they’ve quite clearly told us that they want us to drink something in between. Something new. Something inspiring. Something strong and stable. Something, well, frankly… I don’t like it so I’m going to sip at it for a while before throwing it down the sink and getting a coffee. White, of course. We don’t do black.”

The last-minute decision to switch to a horse race was taken by current prime minister Gordon Brown after Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg proved more popular than sliced bread in a phone vote.

However, Brown is trying to divert attention away from rivals and towards the economy. Labour minister and manifesto architect Millie Headband said: “The economy is safe in our hands. We will be forcing bookmakers to pay all of their profits from the election race to the government. This money will be ring-fenced it to buy Greece and provide free holidays there for hard-working British families.”

Rules for the three-horse race are still being finalised but only the three main parties will be allowed to enter. The winner will be determined on a first-past-the-post basis. This has disappointed Liberal Democrats, who wanted an element of proportionality in the outcome. UKIP are reported to be furious at the decision to make it a three-horse race, claiming that Nigel Farage could have easily taken part, as he is half-horse himself on his mother’s side.

Lib Dem spokesman Lemsip Cableknit said: “We wanted the number of bets placed on each horse to be taken into account. As it stands, one horse can win despite gaining only a small proportion of the betting. That is patently unfair.”

SNP leader Alice Salmontickler is furious at being left out of the race: “Limiting the race to only three horses is an outrageous injustice typical of this London-centric policital system. We have perfectly good horses in Scotland. They keep leaving me out of everything and it just makes me want to cry.”

The Green Party has expressed disappointment at being left out of the running but has welcomed the radical move. Its leader, Carrie Online-Ludicrous, said: “We applaud putting sustainable transportation like horse riding centre stage. This race will have a lower carbon footprint than millions of voters travelling to polling booths, too.”

Conservatives have criticised the move to a three-horse race for not going far enough. “This is typical of the half-baked, opportunistic proposals we have come to expect from this government,” said Alexander St John  Spigginbottom, an aide to David Cameron. “Under a Conservative government, I can guarantee that future elections will be decided not by three horses, but lots of horses and lots of hounds pursuing whoever is the Lib Dem leader at the time.”

At yesterday’s key press conference, Brown unveiled his hastily assembled five pledges for a new manifesto:

• Maximise the efficiency of doing good things
• Reduce the risk of doing bad things
• Strengthen front-line smiling and hand-shaking
• Not spend absolutely gazillions of pounds, and
• Be fair, sympathetic and quite nice to children

“It was a disaster,” said a source close to Brown. “We were all hoping for something a bit more, erm, substantial. And when we left work yesterday, Gordon was still at his desk, promising that he ‘had it sorted’. Well, nobody believed him, but the very least we expected was that he might work through the night.”

“Instead, he sat down to watch Frasier on Comedy Central with a glass of wine, and woke up the next morning with nothing done.”

Brown, realising that he only had an hour to get to the press conference, then flung on a shirt and a tie, and confided to Lord Mandelson in the taxi that he hadn’t written a single pledge.

“It was then that Lord Mandelson’s eyes turned red,” said a source close to the Dark Lord. “And he insisted that Gordon scribble something down immediately. Mandelson was almost dictating, saying – ‘put something about being nice to people’ and ‘make sure you don’t mention anything like hospitals, wars, British Airways or David Cameron’.”

At one point, Brown got confused and pledged to torpedo the Conservative Party, but despite Lord Mandelson egging him on to include it, he scribbled it out, saying that it was “far too specific”.

Labour MPs are delighted with the pledges, which they say will commit them to “absolutely nothing specific” if they were to win the election. Eric Trunkpants, MP for Shytte North, said that he was “over the moon”:

“Gordon couldn’t have come up with anything better if he’d thought about it. These are fantastic pledges – I can now go to my constituents and say nothing specific whatsoever. Thank God he didn’t give any numbers about, say, investment in hospitals or schools – and thank the Lord Mandelson that he didn’t say the slightest thing about getting out of Afghanistan or the minimum wage, or what he would do about the rising price of childcare. This is great.”

“Back in the day, it was considered the cool thing to do”, said an embarassed PM when questioned about Buckie abuse as a schoolchild. “All of the kids at school were doing it, and I was pressured by a peer group into drinking it. I must underline, though, that while I held the bottle of Buckfast to my lips, I most definitely did not swallow. And if I did, I went back to my dormitory and vomited it back like a proper bulemic.”

The drink has come under fire lately after scientists revealed that just three bottles of Buckfast a day, way below the average daily consumption of the average alcoholic Lanarkshire resident, could increase your chances of becoming the next Robert Mugabe.

“It’s a wonder that Scotland hasn’t had a despot already”, said Hamish McHooch of the Glasgow Institute of Tonic Studies (GITS). “Our research has indicated that one bottle a day can turn you into a rapist, two bottles can up your danger level to that of a Uruguayan midfielder, and three bottles can turn you into a seething, fascist dictator. It turns out Franco was quite a guzzler of the old Buckie, so little wonder that he ruled Spain with such an iron fist. Five bottles a day can be potentially harmless to everyone in your immediate surroundings, which is why we’re advising publicans to sell Buckfast with a tranquilliser dart so that nearby friends can calm that person down on the spot.”

Residents of Lanarkshire are bracing themselves for “Buckie rations”. Morag McHoosewreckagh told the Daily Shame that “without my fifteen a day, I’ll go insane. People say it makes you mad, like, but it keeps me calm. If they limit me to ten, I’ll tear this hoose doon ah tells yae!”

Buckfast themselves are now considering a re-brand from the genocide-inducing high-alcohol tonic drink to a “luxury brand” for the homesick Scot who longs to drink the nectar of the highlands. A spokesman for Buckfast said “We’re in dire need of an image change now that people think Gordon Brown has been squaffing our drink. What we need is to go after the affluent, middle-class Scots who’ve left home and want reminding of their childhood.”

Brown, however, finds his own job on the line because of the danger drink. Opposition leader David Cameron pounced on the opportunity, saying that “this just proves what a danger Scottish people are to the community. What’s wrong with champagne?”

The site gained notoriety when it welcomed David Cameron and held him hostage for 36 hours, force-feeding him rusks and formula. The Conservative leader was freed only when a squat team of Tory whips agreed to babysit while the mums went out to watch a Meryl Streep movie.

“It was gruesome”, said Charles Winstanley-Redbush, Conservative MP for Slackbutt Grove. “When we got there, we found him on an intraveinous drip filled with breast milk and they were all screaming like banshees. We knew that Mumsnet were taking this whole biscuit issue seriously, but we didn’t know just how far they would go.”

A shaken Gordon Brown revealed that when he met the mothers from Mumsnet, they held him in an armlock and smothered his face with organic manuka honey, screaming “tell us your favourite biscuit or you die.”

“I told them Bourbon biscuits”, said Brown, “but they didn’t believe me. It was as if I could give any answer and I’d be strung up by the balls. After what happened to David, I didn’t think I’d get out of there alive. The more biscuits I suggested, the less credible I guess my answer appeared.”

The declaration of independence from the Internet is a surprise move that has taken the rest of the Internet by surprise. Mumsnet leader FizzieLiz1969 released a statement early this morning declaring that “in order to create as much pressure as possible, we have detached ourselves from the Internet and will operate independently with our own language, html code and currency. We’ll even have our own flag. Made from organic fairtrade cotton, of course.”

Indeed, the issue of having their own language has long been a talking point on the forum, where members discuss in shorthand that is unintelligible to the rest of the world. For example, “OCB” is “Organic Carrot Bake”, and “child-hating bitch” translates to “woman who has a career”.

Geek forums, however, have declared themselves happy at the declaration of independence, saying “those mumsnet people scared the crap out of us”.

Mumsnet was originally created as a site for mothers to share information and advice. Today, its members meet in Boden balaclavas and babies are hardly ever on the agenda.

One mother who escaped the Mumsnet “net” told the Daily Shame in secret that “they’re the Boden guerillas. I once suggested that we buy non-organic fruit for the meetings and they decided to shun me for a week. It was as if I didn’t exist. And one mother was hounded out after they discovered that her husband earned less than £50,000. Brutal, just brutal.”

The government had considered a number of potential sacrificial options, including Patricia Hewitt and Squirrell Nutkin, but landed on Geoff Hoon after consulting with astrologists and sooth-sayers, who all believed unanimously that the bloody sacrifice of the man they nickname “Buff” would raise public morale.

“I have come to this decision”, said Brown, “because I have clearly in some way angered the Gods and urgently need to make a sacrifice. Geoff has been great about it since I told him – I’ve shown him a few videos of what we do to lambs and all that, and while he’s not entirely comfortable with the idea of sacrifice, he’s 100% behind the plans.”

The ceremony will be televised live on BBC1 and the House of Commons TV channel, as well as on HDTV. It is thought that sales of HD televisions will be boosted by those who want to see the sacrifice in glorious high definition.

Hoon’s cortege will walk from the House of Commons at approximately 10pm, joining the Brown team before drinking the blood of Hazel Blears from a plastic goblet.

“This might seem like an election sweetener”, says polling expert Graham Treepants, “but in reality, it’s way, way more than that. It’s the culmination of the New Labour project. The only surprise is that Lord Mandelson hasn’t been involved in the proceedings, this is his kind of thing.”