In his next life, Keir Starmer returns as a male praying mantis
- In his next life, Keir Starmer returns as a male praying mantis, a creature whose entire existence is a negotiation it cannot win. He spends his brief days in the garden performing elaborate courtship rituals, each movement calibrated to cause no offence, each gesture focus-grouped by evolution itself. He approaches the female sideways, always sideways, never committing to a direction until he's certain she's receptive. She never is. Not really. When the moment finally comes, he mounts her with the grim determination of a man delivering a conference speech to an audience that has already left. She turns her head, slowly, almost bureaucratically, and begins to eat him alive, starting with the face. The remarkable thing: he keeps going. His body continues its mechanical thrusting even as his head disappears into her mandibles. At last, he has achieved what eluded him in human form: the perfect separation of conviction from action. The female, for her part, finds him adequate. Nutritious, even. But she cannot shake the feeling that he was somehow less than the sum of his parts. His final thought, if a headless thorax can think: At least I followed the process.
