THE GRINNING REAPER : Drowning Street has responded to unpatriotic criticism of its handling of the cold pandemic today by pointing out an essential and pertinent fact.
“Were the warnings issued in English?” an official asked the vital question. “Or were they initially issued in a subservient language? I’ll repeat it again for any forrin correspondents present on this Zoom call. WERE. THE. WARNINGS. ISSUED. IN. INGLISH?”
The question is a timely one as the UK death toll nears 150,000, and someone has to be blamed. Anyone but 10 Downing Street.
“Clearly the blame is not the fault of the UK government,” the imaginary spokesman for Primed Sinister Boris Johnson continued. “You look at the way such diverse countries as New Zealand, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Australia and Thailand have handled the crisis? Very differently indeed without our exceptional, out of the box leadership. Just look at the paltry spend on their track and trace systems. You can’t be serious? Talking about looking a gift horse in the mouth!”
But what is in the box(es) are the bodies of the avoidable dead. Tens of thousands of boxes thanks to the genius strategies of Boris and Dom, a modern tour de force of anti-intellectualism and disregard of the bleedin’ obvious.
“We’re British,” the spokesman adds. “We can’t have been expected to understand the weird waffling of foreigners. They were all well advanced into the pandemic anyway and clearly in a panic. What could we learn from them? No. We choose to shake hands with the virus. We choose to take it on the chin. We choose to spend months having a public debate about transmission. Any idiot could have told you it was spreading asymptomatically, but we boldly discouraged asymptomatic testing. We debated face masks in a cold pandemic. Can you believe it? We did. We’re exceptional. We’ve recently realised school kids can spread it. Who would have thought? Did Johnny Foreigner say that? You can thank Boris Johnson for that. If you can find him. He’s pretty bored of all this now if I’m honest.”
British exceptionalism, more dangerous than any smart bomb. Let’s arm it, prime it and have Boris Johnson launch it at ourselves. Again and again and again.