Elon Musk, in his finite wisdom, is axing the Twitter bird logo in favour of the letter X. This follows his recent decision to rebadge the company as X Corp. 

‘What’s this got to do with me?’ I hear you say. ‘I’m a Lib Dem and I’ve got leaflets to deliver.’ Yes, you do have leaflets to deliver, but stay with me – this could be a golden opportunity for the Lib Dems, but only if we have the courage to seize it.

In the infinite reaches of his multidimensional consciousness, Musk has realised the truth about birds: they’re boring. (In fact, they probably don’t even exist )

It’s visionary stuff, right? I mean, what do birds do for us, apart from inspire us with their majestic soaring and melodious tunes? Birds may be the descendants of the dinosaurs and have colonised every continent on Earth including Antarctica, but can they make a cheese sandwich or send a Tweet? No, they opted for beautiful plumage rather than hands – that was their choice, now they have to live with it. 

So, he’s going to axe the blue bird of acrimony and replace it with – surprise, surprise – an X.  As letters go, there are so many reasons to use X. It’s a structurally sound letter, it’s associated with mystery, it’s the 24th letter in the alphabet. Pirates use it on maps, mathematicians use it in equations, and Musk names all his bloomin’ companies after it. 

So, if birds are toast and enigmatic letters are on trend, what does that mean for the Lib Dems? Yes, my dear friends, there is no easy way to say this, but the time has come to retire Libby the bird and replace it with something edgier. 

Musk has shown us the way. Out with blue tits, yellow canaries and other fowl creatures, and in with the enigmatic cipher which, like Musk, can mean anything and stand for nothing. 

But, I hear you say (yes, I am still listening!), isn’t this just aping Elon Musk? 

Yes, that’s the point! Aping genius is smart, that’s why apes do it because they realise there is no point reinventing the wheel. Aping also means you recognise erudition, wisdom and sagacity when you see it – or you’re really good at sucking up. Either way, you will go far in this world by aping or sucking.

Of course, we must avoid trademark infringement, especially when we take the next step and change our name to the X Party, but we can get away with it by simply putting our X in a box. 

Musk wouldn’t do that. Boxes are too square for him – it is anathema to the tech billionaire who has punched holes in the clouds with his SpaceX rockets, punched holes in the ground with his Boring Company, and punched so many holes in the net value of an iconic social media company that it resembles a famous cheese from the Continent. 

Plus (and this is sheer bloody brilliance on a Muskian scale), we won’t even call our new logo an X. No, borrowing from our Celtic heritage, we will call it a cross. 

Musk can have his plain, old, boring X, and we will have our cross – in a box – and we will require all local authorities to print it on ballot papers. 

It’s instantly recognisable, and the public will love it because it’s a great time saver. No longer will voters have to waste time going into a polling booth to put their own cross in a box, we will already have done it for them. All they have to do is pick up the ballot paper from the clerk and put it into the ballot box. 

In the end, everyone will be content and more productive in the new Lib Dem utopia and say, how very Musk of you to shoot the bird! 

* Tom Reeve is a Liberal Democrat councillor in Kingston upon Thames