Keen observers of Australian politics will recall that on January 31 last year, by decree of His Royal Highness, Prince Graeme, the Principality of Hutt River closed its borders.

More and more it appears that after the death of the great Prince Leonard, Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan decided that if 75 square kilometres of the state could be a hotbed of ratbaggery, why not the entire 2.646 million km².

We’re noted in these pages before that McGowan was a submariner. Perhaps he once rose to the surface too swiftly or something, as he’s never quite got it. The Hutt River Province, Prince Leonard and his heir have always conducted the principality’s affairs with a sense of good humour. McGowan has not only lacked the guts to fully secede — where would all that JobKeeper and JobSeeker come from — but acted out of a spirit of ratbag ratbaggery. There’s no wit there. His behaviour has been heavy-handed to the point of vindictiveness and inspired by the crudest pitch to parochialism.

Take his decree today, that his regime is looking to extend the state’s border controls after the coronavirus epidemic has been contained; that the approval and tracking of interstate arrivals may become permanent and that they will be logged on arrival.

That might be the single most preposterous statement a leader of any party in this nation, let alone the leader of any government, has said since the birth of our first colonial legislative councils more than a century and a half ago.

To compound this idiocy, a begging email issued in his name has been appearing in inboxes around the country today.

West Australians are now voting in our State election – and we’ve got 11 days to go until the polls close.

I need your support so my team can get elected. Can you help?

Despite promising not to, the Liberals have unleashed a barrage of negative ads and scare tactics to win votes against our Labor candidates in marginal seats.

I need you to help get my new positive ad on TV by Wednesday, so we can counter the Liberals’ attack and spread our positive message…

Can you chip in to help get our positive TV ad on the air?

For the last week we’ve been running this ad on social media, where we’ve been getting lots of positive feedback that it’s changing hearts and minds.

Yeah, well when you’ve got them by their short and curlies… But seriously. Positive message?

All we have is arrogance compounded by yet more arrogance, delusion compounded by deeper delusion.

McGowan might as well declare himself Prince of the Principality of Weststralia, such is the insanity.

The only problem is that, unlike Prince Leonard and Hutt River, there is nothing to laugh about here.