This is Brexit for you, in one neat GIF, with apologies to whomever it may offend. I have just noticed this fine day that George Osborne, God bless his seal, has a hint of both Mr. Bean and subcomandante Medvedev about his looks, but that is not it, at all.

What I meant to say, at last, is that the current speaker of the US House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, especially in his bearded condition, resembles a very popular and apparently talented Russian slapstick comedian.

As for Ryan’s Senate colleague Mitch McConnell, he should try the part of a spinster great-aunt from the Midwest, a distant relative of the lady in Grant Wood’s master painting.

5 Comments

  1. Yeah, that GIF sums things up neatly, or perhaps the two pictures going the rounds on the Net showing the overnight transformation of Britain’s image from James Bond to a chimp in a “Daily Mail” T-shirt.

    • On the other hand, I have to give it to Cameron: he did the honorable thing and resigned. It also seems that Johnson’s rise has been thwarted, for now. (Did Gove’s wife, through her tabloid connections, get hold of something to blackmail Boris with? Was it a tactical move by Johnson to stay away from the kamikaze job?)

  2. Yes, at least Cameron left with some dignity, like Roy Hodgson.

    Johnson is probably off to nurture his delusion that he’s Churchill during his wilderness years. I hope it’s the last of him politically, but I fear it won’t be.

    Gove has enough problems convincing people he’s human, let alone a leader. I suspect Theresa May will be the next PM but who knows anything for sure any more?

    Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but Corbyn has still managed to come out of this mess as the biggest idiot of the lot. Any half-decent Leader of the Opposition should have been all over the Government this past week, but he’s too busy clinging on desperately to power like his comrade Nicolas Maduro and has now become embroiled in yet another anti-Semitic controversy – at the launch of a report into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

    • I don’t understand that crowd’s fanatical attachment to the anti-Israel cause. They are taking it too personally. Something closer to home must be motivating them, one suspects.

      • I doubt if the reason is particularly deep-seated with most of them. They are fashion victims. Obviously, it’s partly a hangover from the Cold War. Israel has been one of the most prominent allies of the USA since 1967. The USSR backed the Palestinians as part of its “anti-imperialist struggle” and the Far Left followed suit. Radical terrorists such as Carlos the Jackal linked up with Palestinian outfits such as the PFLP and received Eastern Bloc funding. Corbyn, Livingstone et al. – though not directly involved in such terrorism – come from that 70s mindset.

        The obsession with Israel seems to have picked up since the end of apartheid in South Africa and maybe it’s a substitute for that struggle. The Hard Left are generally only capable of focussing on one or two causes at a time. They rarely show much concern for Kurds, Saharawis, Chechens or Uighurs. They don’t tend to get irate about Chinese imperialism in Tibet either. The Dalai Lama is probably too peaceful, too “hippy” for the radicals. More cynically, it’s very unlikely academics are going to campaign for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against China with the same enthusiasm they campaign against Israel, given Beijing’s huge investment in Western universities.

        They may also get some kind of “transgressive” frisson from calling Jews Nazis. There’s certainly something very nasty going on under the surface psychologically. Anti-Zionism is turning into full-blown anti-Semitism in all too many cases.

        Of course, there does need to be a solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict but the Far Left, with their obsessive demonisation of one side, are making things worse, not better.

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