I See You

I see you, Keir Starmer.

I see your square and carefully presented head, all sharp lines and steel, like you’ve been carefully hammered into life by a blacksmith trying to launch a line of impossibly masculine sex dolls. I see you on the TV, calm and composed, dealing in those bothersome facts that are so unpopular these days. You’re a rare breed, Keir Starmer, a British politician in 2019 who comes across like he actually understands the complicated legal intricacies of Brexit rather than blurting out jingoistic dogma. You’re drier than a gusset full of cream crackers when Philip Green walks into a room but to have someone – anyone – in parliament who comes across like they actually have a vague clue what the fuck they’re doing is in this day and age so refreshing it’s practically a Calippo enema.

Even in a political environment so toxic and polarised that the two sides are screaming at each other across the void, there’s a begrudging respect shown your way by the opposition. Even those that write off Corbyn as a wooly fantasist seem to accept at least a little that you know what you’re doing; you’re an established legal expert with genuine pedigree, a knight who’s uncomfortable with titles, and a politician who recognised his own inexperience and refused a climb straight to the top when it was suggested to him. You’re quiet, stoic, diligent and meticulous, four words that when applied to Boris Johnson would physically cause his skin to melt and pull his organs out via osmosis. You didn’t back Corbyn from the start but now he’s here you accept his position and throw your weight behind Labour as whole, a strategy so alien to his many detractors that they can’t even begin to contemplate it.

In short, Keir Starmer? There’s now a job to be done, an olive branch stretched out across the political divide, and you’re the only man for the job.

I see you, Keir Starmer, lying in your perfectly dressed and tucked bed in your carefully ironed pyjamas. I hear the alarm go off, Sonny and Cher blaring across the radio as you reach across and switch it off. I see you brush your teeth, knot your tie, carefully comb your hair with all the precision of a military operation.

I see you walk with confidence into the briefing room, Theresa May smiling at you with all the warmth she can muster. Corbyn might put her badger’s hackles up but for you, Keir Starmer? For you she might just compromise. She might just wash some of the ink out of those red lines.

I feel the day tick away, your composure never rattled as that hope wears thinner and thinner. I see you thumb the pages of your folder full of solutions, each of them a possibility dashed against the rocks of May’s stubbornness. Ah well. She was never going to budge on day one, was she? Time for rest, time for bed, and you’ll start again in the morning.

I see you, Keir Starmer, lying in your perfectly dressed and tucked bed in your carefully ironed pyjamas. I hear the alarm go off, Sonny and Cher blaring across the radio as you reach across and switch it off. I see you blink, a strange and vague feeling of deja vu washing over you. I see you brush your teeth, your fingers hesitating as you knot your tie. I hear you tut as you struggle to tame your hair with a comb.

I see you walk with confidence into the briefing room, Theresa May smiling at you with all the warmth she can muster. I see you pause in the doorway, feeling the weight of the briefcase in your hand.

I feel the day tick away, a knot forming in your stomach as you try to piece together just what it is that’s bothering you. Haven’t you been here before? It certainly feels familiar. Here she is, as unwavering and unwilling as ever, insisting it’s her deal or bust. Ah well. She was never going to budge on day one, was she? Time for rest, time for bed, and you’ll start again in the morning.

I see you, Keir Starmer, sitting bolt upright in your perfectly dressed and tucked bed in your carefully ironed pyjamas. I hear the alarm go off, Sonny and Cher blaring across the radio as you grab for it, smashing it to a thousand frantic pieces on the bedside table. I smell the funk of your breath and can see the nervous sweat running down your temples.

It just never ends, Keir Starmer. She’ll never change. Never waver. It. Never. Ends.

I see you, Keir Starmer. I fucking see you.

I see you, Michael Cohen.

I see you at your liar’s pulpit, your face stoic, your voice so New York that you sound like you’re auditioning for Bugsy Malone. It’s time to set the record straight, isn’t it? Never mind that you were the one who bent it so far over it could suck itself off in the first place. Your liberty has now officially been pulled out from underneath you and now it’s time to go all Butch & Sundance on your way to prison.

What a spectacular piece of political theatre your testimony proved to be, a colourful and welcome distraction from another week of Theresa May treating Brexit like her own personal episode of Bernard’s Watch. While the opposing gears of our political machine seem to be jammed in perpetual gridlock, across the pond a newly invigorated Democratic party have finally lubed their elbows enough to start getting some jabs in. Trump’s rabid unravelling continues at a breakneck pace, the coals of his baby’s temper stoked by a humiliating failure to broker any kind of agreement with a tinpot dictator. The man who prides himself on his ability to make deals couldn’t convince Kim Jong Un to decommission a smoke alarm. It’s a good few years too late but he finally made it to Vietnam, where instead of his great victory he got his nose tweaked by a Dr Evil tribute act. Without the smokescreen of success to protect him Trump didn’t have much option but to react in his trademark fashion, lashing out with less dignity than a dreadlocked white guy windmilling in the pit at a Mastodon concert.

It says a lot about just how far America’s political discourse has sunk that Michael fucking Cohen can find himself elevated to any kind of position of virtue. Yet here we are, cautiously lauding the bravery of a scumbag backed into a corner, a man who conveniently remembers to tell the truth now he’s out of options. The committee hearing was a carnival of outrage, with Republicans like Meadows and Jordan desperate to attack and discredit rather than make any sincere attempt to ferret out anything resembling the truth. The GOP has circled the wagons and offered themselves body and soul, offering up black women as props and obfuscating at any possible opportunity.

There’s no escaping it, Michael Cohen – you’ve got less credibility than Jennifer Lopez’s acting showreel. You’re a convicted liar. Why, then, is there not one fucking person on the Republican side who refuses to capitulate, and instead raises the rather salient point that you lied at the behest of Trump?

At this point, the inner-indicted circle of the President are so unfathomably and self-evidently corrupt that they wouldn’t be convincing as baddies in a crap script. Roger Stone is a less believable villain than that bloke in Die Another Day who had enough plastic surgery to turn himself from a tiny Korean man into a six-foot ginger prefect. The entire shit-show has all the dignity of a troll farm meme, all critical thinking and common sense surrendered to an absolute farce of ‘deep state’ conspiracy theory and misdirection. When Mueller finally pulls his thumb out of his arse it better be with such a resounding pop that it shatters the fallacy entirely or we’re all fucked. Trump’s proven himself a weeble that will wobble but won’t fall down, so it’s either on the special counsel or the House to knock him over entirely. Lord knows the GOP won’t, having bound themselves to his fate so thoroughly that they’re playing guitar on the front of the truck he’s crashing through America.

As for you, Michael Cohen? You’re the rat you always were, a criminal rendered a hero by godawful comparison.

I see you scampering down the dark corridors of power, the rank walls dripping with oil and hamberder fat, the stench of rot and stale covfefe in the air. I see you scrambling for crumbs, your whiskers twitching, desperate to pick up any morsel to sustain you. I see you pause, your small black eyes frozen in the darkness, your spine rigid with fear.

Behind you in the gloom I hear the moan, a low, sickly trumpeting sound that echoes around you. I hear the snort and I feel the fetid air crash over you, the rotten breath of the great beast washing over your paralysed little body. I hear it start to stomp down the corridor, the floor shaking, lights swinging from their fixtures. I see the dust begin to billow at its head, its filthy tusks swinging back and forth, gouging chunks out of the brickwork.

I hear you squeak, Michael Cohen, and I see you attempt to spring to life. Too late, I see the trunk scoop you up, tossing you into the air. I see you disappear into that necrotic throat.

I see the elephant, its hide covered in pustules and blisters, the sweet stench of rot pouring off it in hot waves. I see its bleary eyes, their corners crusted with filth, unable to cry in horror at what it has become. I see it lurch forward blindly, a dying beast now choking on its final meal.

I see it shudder and collapse, retching as it dies. This is where we’ve come, Michael Cohen. To the point where a single rank little rat could be enough to kill the Republican beast, a leviathan that has long since surrendered to its own corruption.

I see you, Michael Cohen. I fucking see you.