Tag Yourself in This Photo of Some Tories

Well yesterday was the first day of the election campaign proper, and you can probably guess how it went: the liberal voting base decided to eat itself, caught in the same old argument that always harpoons any chance of a left-wing victory, everyone arguing over which imperfect party leader is more or less imperfect, everyone discussing out loud the idea of defecting to the Greens but not really thinking about defecting to the Greens, everyone basically splitting a fine sizeable voting group neatly in three so fucking none of the parties can possibly win it; and the Tories just stoically got on with being Tory, printing placards out and going to Bolton and starting a campaign to win an election.

The Conservatives, in many ways, are like United in their Fergie pomp, Chelsea during the first time under Mourinho: you didn't have to like them, no – in fact, you very often loathed them – but they knew how to win. They didn't go out there and pass the ball about and try to tiki-taka it around Stoke. They didn't try to elegantly win 6–0. They spaffed £26 million on Didier Drogba, set up defensively and ground out enough 1–0 victories to win the fucking thing. Winning is cynical. Nobody does that better than the Conservative Party.

So this is the photo, from Bolton, yesterday: Theresa May, trouser suit and kitten heels, pumping her fist in the lumpy face of the Tory electorate. I have many questions: why were all these people available to attend a speech in the middle of the day? Is there a mailing list that goes about to round these people up? Do none of them have jobs to be at? Who built that podium at such short notice? How did they print all those placards in time?

But those are not the questions for today. The question for today is: which one of these is you? And the answer is: tag yourself. Tag yourself among the following. Tag yourself, tag yourself, tag yourself. You're in there somewhere. So tag yourself.

tag yourself I'm the guy who sincerely thought he was queueing up for a Grand Tour recording and now it's all getting a bit hectic and I'm not really sure whether I can leave now or if the cameras will see me do it and then I'll become the election's first meme so best just to quietly stand here and end up voting Conservative anyway

tag yourself there's absolutely no fucking way this is an actual human man, there's absolutely no fucking way; this is four small Tory children pressed into the same ill-fitting mis-matched suit; later these eight-year-olds will try and fail to sneak into Fate of the Furious at the Brixton Picturehouse; there is absolutely no way this person is real; tag yourself

tag yourself mum said she'll give my Xbox to a vulnerable boy if I don't put on my private school entry interview suit and help her campaign for a victorious government, even though we both know she won't do it

tag yourself I'm the distant, emotionless gaze of a juvenile dog killer

tag yourself I was just trying to pop into this building to use the toilet and now I'm appearing in my own personal Curb Your Enthusiasm episode

tag yourself I just dropped the ten grand in cash I inexplicably carry around with me everywhere I go, oh bother

tag yourself I'm the 25-year-old regional manager at a call centre who uses his own holiday time to attend two-day Better In Business events that cost £400 a throw and are yet to yield a profit but I still come back with a load of free pens to click in the faces of my underlings and I'm 30 percent done with my mortgage already

tag yourself I am egg

tag yourself I have the most fucked up haircut in all the western world, I set this fucker with a ruler, how is it possible for a bouffant to be this straight, for blown out hair to be this angular

tag yourself I'm yelling "MUMMY, WHOMST HATH DELETED ALL THOSE EPISODES OF UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE OFF THE SKY RECORDER, YOU KNOW THOSE WERE MY FAVOURITE!" up a set of immaculately carpeted stairs

tag yourself I'm these two guys who haven't had a natural erection between them since the day Maggie died

tag yourself I was the antagonist in three episodes of Sharpe – the posh-boy-gone-army who waltzed into the position of general and decided to lord it over Sharpe, calling him a "putrid mush" and getting his lackies to rustle through his field kit and mess with his camp, before getting shot in a war in the worst manner possible and, while Sharpe soothes my crumpled singed body as I finally exhale and die, I say, "You know, Sharpe? For an uncouth working class oik… you're a… bally good… blo-o-oke"

tag yourself I'm such a thoroughbred Tory I can barely fucking breathe

tag yourself I'm "I haven't got a racist bone in my body!" in the streets, "full-on saying the N-word while golfing" in the sheets

tag yourself every time a vehicle pulls up outside the Indian family's house down the road I'm at the net curtains like a bullet, twitching and seething and desperately checking Rightmove to see if my property price has been affected but— phew, no, it's still running at a smooth £1.2 million, the nest egg is safe

tag yourself I don't consider myself "rich" rich but I'm set to inherit a Lotus and 150 acres so *sips £80 glass of champagne without even fucking blinking* so… you tell me, babe

tag yourself you don't want to know what I've done to get here, son. You don't want to know about my past. You don't… you don't want to know what I've done.

tag yourself I am very serious about this: there is no way that those legs match that torso. It just does not match up. Is this a camera trick? Is this man a magician, primed to perform a trick where his legs detach from his body and head? I just. How.

tag yourself I keep leaning heavily on the receptionist's desk and asking her out for lunch, and every day I'm here, the lunch requests more persistent, the offers more lavish, and she knows it's a joke, she knows it's a joke – she's got a boyfriend, Ben, a personal trainer actually, bloody good guy – but it's not a joke. It's not a fucking joke. She's 22 and I want her.

tag yourself all of my mates dropped out of the plan at the last minute so I ended up going to prom in a limousine by myself, but when I got there – black suit, black shirt, white tie, black fedora, £500 down, mum taking all the photos of me posing alone with a limo – all my friends were already there enjoying the party, but I'd never let those tossers see me cry, never never never never

tag yourself I have diligently reviewed everything I've ever bought on Amazon and every small cosy B&B I've stayed in in York on TripAdvisor and I have never given more than two stars for anything, not even once

tag yourself I'm literally Stinky from Hey Arnold and I'm holding two placards for reasons unknown

tag yourself I'm appearing in the local newspaper talking about my campaign to make my university recognise white men as the REAL minority group these days

tag yourself I'm the three-time regional finalist in the Jeans and Sheux Classic and next year I really think there's a chance I'll win it

tag yourself I haven't given my son a present for his birthday for eight years, just a small plain handwritten card informing him I have deposited an appropriate amount of money into an ISA he can gain access to when he is 18 years old and not a day be-fucking-fore

tag yourself I AM EGG

tag yourself I'm thinking about whether I would, just for the story, and even I wouldn't

tag yourself I am thE EGG SHALL GREET YOU BOY ON THE JOURNEY TO THE ABYSS, AND KISS YOU WET ON THE LIPS, I SHALL, AND USHER YOU FORTH INTO THE DARKNESS, HUSH NOW, NO CRY, EGG IS HERE

tag yourself I say "hear, hear!" at every speech I go to, my family stopped inviting me to weddings, please, Tory manifesto parties are all I have now, please, doctors say the pressure of my blood will kill me before my heart has the chance to

tag yourself I am T H E E G G H E A R S A L L A N D S E E S A L L T O O

tag yourself my Tinder bio is three (three.) photos of me skiing and one pose from the LinkedIn profile professional shoot I did 18 months ago, and my extremely expensive private school is listed there along with my law degree

tag yourself I am the queen of the lizards, the lizard queen

tag yourself I am the egg pulses and glows. the egg creaks and flares in the darkness. one day the egg shall hatch – not like your egg, your chicken egg, shards of shell fractured out one by one, a fragile little chick inside ­it – no. one day the egg shall hatch in clockwork pieces, unfolding like a robot, whirring and the smell of solder on the air, and there, in amongst the pistons and the machine parts: another, slightly smaller egg

@joelgolby