Look, it’s not funny. I don’t know why you’re all sniggering at the back because – seriously now! – it’s not funny. Or big. Or clever. Dropping a banner reading “I crashed the economy” live on stage behind Liz Truss, just as she was earnestly criticising Joe Biden’s handling of the economy from the lofty heights of a provincial theatre in Suffolk, is definitely not a laughing matter.
Honestly, what is so amusing about a failed prime minister still out there plugging her book about how to save the west, despite having been unable to save her own job? Would it be so funny, she huffed shortly after stalking off stage, if some far-right activist did this to a leftwing politician? The prank by activists Led by Donkeys was to “suppress free speech” (hers), and very definitely not an exercising of free speech (theirs). Nor is it funny – seriously! Not funny! – that this stunt happened hours after she fiercely defended Elon Musk’s decision to let X users say whatever they liked about other people on his platform, even if that did lately seem to end in bricks being thrown at the police. Riots are one thing, but disrupting a literary event? Now that’s crossing the line.
