oh boris

on chaos, control and the sublime inanity of British politics

What a delightfully disastrous week it’s been here in London.

Sun, heat, political chaos set to the timeless Bennie Hill theme song (courtesy of the inimitable prankster Hugh Grant) — apart from the long-forgotten pipe dream of an even semi-functional government, what more could a gal possibly want? Even by British standards, the week’s spectacle really outdid itself, climaxing with yesterday’s announcement by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that he would be “stepping back” — the will of the Party, tallyho! — but not before stabbing his old frenemy Michael Gove, the erstwhile Minister for Levelling Up (or down, or something), in the back. I relished that particular flourish — an exquisite, desperate reversal of the “You’re-fired-too-late-I-quit” stock moment of the 80s comedies of my youth.

While none of it was remotely surprising (coming as it did on the back of an agonising and drawn out lying/shagging/boozing/pinching sleaze scandal that within a few months of Johnson’s premiership made Theresa May’s post-Brexit “omnishambles”look about as shocking as an episode of the Romper Room) the final slow-motion car crash was cathartic, a weird but fitting pay off for the months of mounting anti-climactic pressure followed by a seemingly-hopeless drip-drip-drip to nowhere. It was the sort of sublime nonsense that could only happen in a nation built on the twin pillars of ruthless colonial arrogance combined with an almost fetishistic enjoyment of a joke at its own expense. It’s a country that reaches peak of its charms the moment it stops even trying to make sense. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here.