It didn’t take long, did it? With the Queen finally reunited with Prince Philip, the country, indeed the world, lurches back to normal. As the country mourned its much loved Queen, a camera caught chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng in the pews, behind the surviving prime ministers, laughing near hysterically at God knows what, before swaying and sweating during the moment’s silence for her majesty. No cheap jokes about Charlie, please. And This Morning hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby trying to come up with bullshit excuses for queue-jumping when the Queen was lying in state. They were there to represent those who couldn’t be there. They were there to report on the news, like the journalists they aren’t. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, something more sinister happens.
A Russian MP appears on a state-owned Russia TV channel calling for nuclear strikes on Berlin and the UK. He wants to “turn the United Kingdom into a Martian desert in three minutes. Then the US President can use any response but the UK will be ashes.” I suppose the MP had to say something and not that President Putin is a genocidal, fascist maniac. That would not end well, with him perhaps falling out of a skyscraper window. So, instead, he stuck to the party line or something he felt was akin to it. I didn’t write it off as pure nonsense. Who knows what a desperate man might do?
It was a salutary reminder of what reality looks like. Not that the Queen’s death and subsequent funeral wasn’t real, of course. That was very sad and oddly unifying. However, if things stood still in our world, they kept moving everywhere else.
In Ukraine, mass graves were uncovered, as well as a torture chamber. We are looking at serious war crimes here and it doesn’t require the intellectual skills of a rocket scientist to work out that Putin would be the first man in the dock if charges were brought. Except that without him being toppled – and there is no chance of that happening – that dock will remain empty and Putin will just carry on. He is not winning his war with Ukraine and in the back of one’s mind comes the thought and fear that a desperate man might seek desperate measures. And the ultimate measure might be?
This may or may not be nonsense, trying to scare us, hoping we’ll back off from the Russian Bear by helping to defend Ukraine. But my view – and this is another reason why I might not make the best prime minister – is that we, the west should go in harder and stronger. I am not saying the action we are taking, which involves providing equipment and logistics, isn’t working but I’d like to take the fight to Putin. Not the sopping wet liberal lefty you thought I was, eh? I mean, not just the UK, but the west, so despised by the Corbynistas and the Farageistas through NATO. I may not have thought this through properly and I am sure it would be quite easy to find flaws in my argument but where does support stop and the fightback begin? If what we are doing already is working, then cancel my warmongering immediately.
If we do decide to step things up, maybe Phil and Holly will jump the queue to get to the frontline to represent those who couldn’t be there? And take with them Kwasi Kwarteng, the Queen’s funeral giggler, who would have been slaughtered by the right wing gutter press if he had been a Labour MP.
Reality really isn’t all that it’s cranked up to be, is it?
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