The disconnect between the perilous international situation and the fundamental unseriousness of the UK government is genuinely terrifying. We couldn’t have worse politicians at a more dangerous time. To say I’m anxious about the outcome would be understating it considerably.
I mean, it’s not just the ignorance or the narcissism, the endless posturing and smirking photo-ops, the glibness, the constant we-do-it-better-than-anyone else bragging. Or the absence of diplomatic nous from those occupying the major offices of state. This is a government
largely chosen because of its ability to ‘do Brexit’ - a process that has yet to be done and for which these politicians have no serious answers as to how it can be done. It’s a government of Johnson loyalists and abject careerists - the two are not incompatible. An extremist
government beholden to the most extremist wing of an extremist party. A government that has spent two years playing with matches over the Northern Ireland Protocol and insulting and alienating the European allies it must now work with in a major conflict involving not just
Another Third World country that you can bomb, occupy, and then abandon, but a major power armed with thermonuclear weapons - a power that has kept the Tory Party and many Tory MPs afloat on a sea of dirty money, whose baleful influence reaches to the Prime Minister himself! So
this is not just a bad situation, it’s mindfuckingly terrifying. And all of it propped up by a venal rightwing press and social media operation that will never tell the public how terrifying it actually is.
Only today, in one paper, a columnist called for a no fly zone over Ukraine as if we were still back in Iraq in 1991, without any apparent realisation of where this could lead. Another praised Liz Truss for having a ‘good war.’ These journalists are as shallow as the politicians
they worship. They will say anything to keep them in power just as these politicians will say anything to stay in power. We elected the Smurfs for a laugh. Now we expect them to lead and guide us through a world that resembles a Breughel tryptich.
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