Like a bald man masturbating alone into an open pedal bin, Boris Johnson’s Brexit Britain disgusts itself. And yet, despite being observed on the gents’ toilet’s security camera that is the modern world stage, it continues its abasement unabashed. After the second world war, the German volk were described as experiencing kollektivschuld, a national shame. But the capacity for shame has been surgically removed from our leaders. And it pulses only weakly, like some underactive perineal muscle, in the electorate that endorses them. Could it be possible instead for the physical mass of a nation, rather than the citizens it comprises, to display the attributes of shame?
Brexiter culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, who didn’t know what the customs union was, has called publicly for the removal of public funding for a TV channel that isn’t publicly funded; Brexiter Dominic Raab, who had not appreciated the importance of Calais, went paddleboarding in Crete while Kabul rescue cats fought to get on British planes; and Brexiter Rishi Sunak, who has all his different breads in all his different houses, took lucrative advantage of tax loopholes that the EU he sought to exit had hoped to close.
