"Look at him"

 I remember when twitter first took the piss out of J*c*b R**s-M*gg. I think he'd posted some photograph outside a shop that sported a Vote Labour poster in 2017, with a caption about how he'd be "taking his custom elsewhere" or some bollocks, anyway he looked like a twerp, and twerps are good currency on twitter, especially among comedians, so my timeline was full of him. The following day, however, I realised I hadn't been looking closely enough. The shop was a tattoo parlour. It was a joke. And the Sun, the Mail, and BBC2's "Daily Politics" I remember, all heralded M*gg as a darling of the internet. And they were right.

 I already knew of him though, as I had remembered - but not verbatim - his speech in the House of Commons the previous year when Leave had won the referendum, something about how this vote had – and I wish I could remember the exact words – "awoken an ancient power". And I remember it because I remember fearing he was right, and wishing someone would ask him to specify exactly what "ancient power" he was so looking forward to see returning.

 And I remember, far earlier, in 2008, when Boris Johnson won the London Mayoral election, thinking quite specifically: "Oh fuck, Johnson's going to be this country's Nixon, isn't he... He's never going away until he gets the top job, and once he does, history will never forget him oh bloody hell." And I remember seeing Johnson, four years later, cycle right past me – ten feet from me – long after he'd tried to turn the fourth plinth into a war memorial and greenlit that weird little wedge-shaped temple on the corner of Green Park celebrating the role of white guys in WWII - and I remember dreaming, just then, of pushing Johnson under a bus, just... just in case, just a little dream... And oh yeah, four years after that I played the prick.

  And now he's Prime Minister, and the other one's Leader of the House, and both have taken private meetings with Trump's former strategist Steve Bannon, a self-confessed white supremacist who understood as none before the unprecedented lift a tidal wave of publicity can give a candidate who looks like they don't give two fucks about political process, even if - and this is something that had clearly never occurred to Johnson before - it's a wave of outrage.

 And tonight, a new British Government lost its first vote. And Johnson might call an election, positioning his Government very specifically now as anti-Parliamentary. And M*gg is lounging on the front bench, literally, and all over my internet again. Trending. And it's all very Bannon.

 So, really what I'm saying is, until we're absolutely sure M*gg isn't going to be this country's Trump, let's maybe actually not look at him. Do nothing to build the wave he looks so sure is coming to lift him. Just in case. Ta. Here's yer moment of Zen:

(Thanks to David Reed for the tip.)