Another week, another 65 million British heads simultaneously slumping into their respective hands while calls grow for the national anthem to be replaced with a collective, dissonant sigh. It just feels right, doesn't it? I mean, why not position ourselves on the world stage in a way that truly reflects our national pride right now? In the same week the UK sought to break international law by reneging on its own Brexit agreement we were looking to deport asylum seekers for exercising their internationally recognised right to claim asylum. I don’t really know why we’re surprised anymore. In Johnson, we have the kind of person that smashed up restaurants and burnt money in front of homeless people as a teenager. The kind of person who mocks others with their own impunity. The idea that that kind of person would draw a line under such behaviour, now, after a lifetime of it delivering wealth and prestige to them, seems a fictitious stretch, even by the standards of the £350m-a-week crew. Instead we see him for what he is. And by association what we are: a law breaking country punishing those who aren’t breaking any laws. We are a burglar complaining when his personal effects are taken at police check-in. We are a spiralling, hysterical mess, led by clueless pretenders who assume our embarrassing conduct on the world stage can be as easily dismissed as it can be in the forgiving pages of the Great British press. And don't get it twisted: that Press is complicit. In the Rwanda scheme. The enduring premiership of Johnson. The widely held belief that asylum seekers are filthy scroungers rather than the desperate war-fleeing families they almost always are. The Press are at best asleep at the wheel and at worst, they've completely abandoned their M/O to report what happens, to investigate, to tell people The Truth - and instead, they use fear to sell more papers, to hell with the cost to wider society. In Press-land, specifically STEM newspapers (Sun, Telegraph, Express, Mail), the grounded flight to Rwanda is outrageous. I have no doubt that there were Mail readers on cancelled flights to their skiing holidays who were more angry about the Rwanda flight than their own. Bewilderingly, in Press-land, the Rwanda policy was both a deterrent AND the right and moral thing to do. It should deter people from coming to Britain because, you know, Rwanda is *bad*. And yet at the same time there's nothing wrong with Rwanda, why are you being so racist? It was the right thing to do. You know, to help these people. Total mystery why they couldn't see that then. Weird how they had to be handcuffed and thrown on the plane against their wishes and those of every prominent lawyer in the UK. Maybe it's cultural? You know what they're like. Personally? Big fan of the idea it was the moral option. I've always enjoyed political comedy. "Ahhh so that's why they did it!" we're expected to conclude. I mean, sure, SURE, we're talking about a PM who lied about flying his mistress around the globe, misappropriating public funds, breaking his promise to lay down in front bulldozers; we're talking about a Home Sec who'd cut up an ambulance to get to a snuff premier on-time; We're talking about a Govt that lied to the Queen, to illegally prorogue Parliament, to implement a Brexit that was won on false promises and illegal campaign spending, but sure: Johnson and Patel are just weirdly, randomly, uncharacteristicallydoing what's best for society's most desperate here. “Do you think Jesus would be pro-Rwanda plan?” asked GB News on Tuesday. “Oh absolutely” replied Right-wing, Christian commentator Calvin Robinson. "Absoluuuuutely." Why GB News cast Calv' in the role of Jesus' spokesman remains unclear (I was free, ffs). This is a guy who was blocked from becoming a priest by the Church of England for his Right-wing views. Only in the green rooms of Britain's most desperate news channel could he be deemed a suitable pundit here. I mean, Christ-On-Cable-News, *I* was rejected by every single Australian woman I propositioned back in 2002... Look out for my segment on What Women Want. So, Patel and Johnson are doing God's work. They’re saving these people, don't you know? It’s doing the right w̶i̶n̶g̶thing. Shipping victims of torture away from their relatives and off to a foreign land where there's fuck all infrastructure and minimal interpreters is What Jesus Would Do. *places bag over the head of an impoverished, exhausted homosexual & throws him on a plane, kicking and screaming* “Guys, guys, I know, I KNOW. But sometimes the right thing isn’t always the easiest thing, ok?” Sometimes you wonder what the rest of the world must think of us? I mean, here we are on our weird, little island with our predominantly Right-wing newspapers and our TV news that take their queues from the “What The Papers Say” sections. And you wonder - to what extent are we living in a conditioned, North Korea-lite news bubble? Everything seems nuts to you and me, but 30% of voters inexplicably still believe the Conservative Party are the mutt's nuts. And then you read things like this New Yorker piece that eviscorates the Rwanda policy. You see the Irish Times' appraisal of Brexit. You check the Washington Post and the Sydney Morning Herald. And you realise you’re not nuts after all. It’s everyone else that is. They’re all drunk on the Murdoch-Rothermere koolaid where they see Britain simultaneously as a frustrated country held back from re-achieving its greatness AND too shit to run a functioning asylum processing centre. Press regulation has never been needed more. But it feels it's never been further from us. And until it arrives in a meaningful way, one man's Global Britain will be another's Rogue State. *new national anthem plays out*
