It’s panto season in London and the greatest show in town is undoubtedly the British general election result and the media reaction to it. In a priceless fairy tale mash-up Boris Johnson’s big bad wolf and his troupe of ugly sisters, evil stepmothers and nasty pirates have turned the tables on the morally pure princesses and charming princes of the MSM and it’s a pleasure to be alive.  

I know schadenfreude is the popular term these days but I prefer comeuppance. German just doesn’t seem the right language to fully express the hilarious satisfaction induced by the chest–beating, eye-bulging, garment-rending, stupefication of the woke media in the face of Boris’ ‘stonking’ win.  And I’m not even a fan of Boris. 

In true panto tradition those saintly scribes of the MSM, especially The Guardian, ignored all the audience cries of ‘Watch out !’ and once again slipped on a gigantic banana skin and fell flat on their thin-skinned backsides. What a hoot! Give me, or more precisely, them, comeuppance any day. 

The backlash began brewing as soon as the exit poll results were released and things were looking bad for Corbyn’s ‘communist lite’ Labour. 

An early favourite was Johnson or Corbyn? What mattered was who voters hated least by The Guardian’s ‘parliamentary sketch writer’ John Crace. 

The first version of Crace’s article focused on reactions to the exit poll with much of the expected claptrap, including: 

The shark has well and truly been jumped and the truth has become a foreign country. And it’s the Tories who have been the worst offenders, adopting every trick out of the Steve Bannon/Donald Trump playbook. Why tell a small lie when you’re so much better off going big? And if you are caught out lying, never apologise. Just double down on it. Tell a lie often enough, then some people will believe it. And a substantial number had been dumb enough to fall for “Get Brexit done”. The most egregious lie of all.

So, once again it was Trump’s fault, along with ‘dumb’ voters who had just spoiled everything for the rest of those who know best and should be blindly obeyed. Wouldn’t you know it? 

The best takeout from the article’s original version mysteriously disappeared from the updated version you can currently read on The Guardian website.  Lucky for you, after much searching I managed to find the original version still floating around on Nine MSN. It would be a shame for you to miss such a pearl of a paragraph:    

Jo Johnson bravely tried to insist that he was very pleased it was turning into such a good night for his brother. But his eyes told a different story. He knows his brother better than almost anyone. And he knows him to be a fraud. A narcissist for whom lying has always been the default setting.

In the face of an apparently sincere comment from the PM’s brother, Crace’s delusional delving found ‘lying eyes’. Perhaps his job description should be updated to ‘parliamentary mind reader’. 

But it is another Guardian favourite, George Monbiot who tried to elevate maudlin musing to analysis, even tweeting on the night : 

We have each other. No one needs to face this setback alone. We are the resistance now.

Along with a link to the gospel song and protest anthem, We Shall Overcome. How very 1960s. 

The analysis in his piece, Out of this darkness we must find the will to fight back, included the following: 

Solidarity is going to be crucial over the coming months. We should seek, wherever possible, to put loyalty to party and faction aside, and work on common resolutions to a crisis afflicting everyone who wants a kinder, fairer, greener nation.

Those who govern us would love to keep us in ignorance. When they deride “elites”, they don’t mean people like themselves – the rich and powerful. They mean teachers and intellectuals. They are creating an anti-intellectual culture, to make people easier to manipulate. Let’s reinvigorate the workers’ education movements. Let’s restore a rich public culture of intellectual self-improvement, open to everyone. Knowledge is the most powerful tool in politics.

So, in other words, if only all those dumb people who didn’t vote for Labour were educated properly things would be ‘kinder, greener and fairer’. The socialist utopia isn’t dead, it has merely been delayed. 

In another Guardian piece, one wonders how Marina Hyde managed to type at all, considering how difficult that must be with your middle finger so far extended.  

The overblown scattergun vitriol in her article, This was a stunning victory for the bullshit-industrial complex, contained a number of blistering bon mots, which were all clearly aimed at Johnson et al and the hapless Corbyn. But implicit in this criticism is always the dog-whistling of which the left-leaning media is always accusing those on the right. That middle finger is inevitably pointed simultaneously at anyone capable of voting for the racist, xenophobic, capitalist policies of those with whom they disagree.  

Consider these:  

Solemnly, Gove announced that Britain’s Jews “should never have to live in fear again”. Britain’s Muslims, not so much, given the prime minister’s multiple racisms on that and other fronts…

The Tory programme for government was not so much a manifesto as a Mumsnet “Am I being unreasonable?” thread.

Johnson announced his intention to bring the country back together, presumably by walling us in and forcing us to till his sunlit uplands.

Through work commitments I missed a lot of the ‘pass the popcorn’ moments of Trump’s 2016 election, more’s the pity. Not this time. I have staked places in front of the computer and on the lounge in front of the TV.  I’m determined not to miss one delicious moment.  

As they say in the woke classics. Karma’s a bitch.  

Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.