The Labour Party just released a painful cover of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’

Yeah, you read that correctly.

A group of Labour MPs have released a version of the Band Aid hit Do They Know It’s Christmas raising awareness for the fact that companies are cutting perks, like double time on holidays, due to the national living wage.

The video, titled National Living Rage, croons about cuts to overtime pay, free lunches, and how corporations take from workers and give nothing back.

It’s as bad as you imagine – actually, it’s worse. Like, screaming-at-your-screen-to-stop worse. Rather-pull-your-ears off worse.

Funnily enough, the Labour Party only have a few MPs that can actually sing, so their rendition will likely make your skin crawl from the second it opens with a cringe worthy scramble as someone asks “Has anyone got a keyboard?”

Come on Labour: don’t give them any more ammo. At least make your music videos look organised.

It’s possible they were inspired by this pro-Corbyn carol by Robb Johnson and The Corbynistas, which is better by quite some distance and at least not painful:

The cast consists of MPs Siobhain McDonagh (as producer/director, who posted the video on YouTube), Kevin Brennan (the guy with the specs who isn’t too bad), Dan Jarvis (tall, blue shirt, who’s tipped to be a future Labour leader) and Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner.

Siobhain McDonagh has been campaigning against big companies shafting their employees since George Osborne’s plans to raise the national minimum wage were announced, and one of her constituents told her how B&Q in particular were getting around it.

In addition, Julie Cooper (MP for Burnley and Padingham), Mary Creagh (MP for Wakefield), Julie Elliot (MP for Wearside), Helen Goodman (MP for Bishop Auckland), Carolyn Harris (MP for Swansea East), Mike Kane (MP for Wythenshawe and Sale East), Fiona MacTaggart (MP for Slough) contributed to the chorus as well as Melanie Onn who said it was a “highly embarrassing way of raising an important issue." Although there appears to have been no better ideas. 

Lyrics include “Christmas is hard on the national minimum wage” and “At Christmastime we give, but some employers take / And we know that they have plenty, but they give out less and less.” and “Stand up against their greed this Christmas time.”

To be fair, Kevin Brennan (MP for Cardiff West) has a decent set of pipes on him and the message is an honourable one, even if the method isn’t. It’s also for charity, with all the profits going to Band Aid Trust. Although we have a feeling that “profits” may be too lofty an ambition for this piece of musical/political history.

Band Aid’s mission is to help hunger and health causes across Africa, and we’re not sure how bothered they are about getting Christmas off and B&Q docking employee perks – maybe some of the ‘profits’ could go into a better campaign for workers rights...

But anyway, if nothing else, thanks for the Christmas gift we never, ever wanted.