In a move that has stunned absolutely no one, the United States has eliminated a prominent figure in the ongoing Venezuelan crisis via precision air strike, prompting the usual fanfare from the man who once boasted about grabbing the nuclear codes by the, ahem, 'pocket square'. President Trump, in a statement that sounded suspiciously like a tweet composed at 3am, declared 'Mission Accomplished' for the fifth time this month, while the UK's intelligence community, known colloquially as 'the chaps with the umbrellas', assess the potential for a sudden spike in the price of avocados and the risk of retaliatory sanctions on British gin imports. The deceased, whose name is already being forgotten by the 24-hour news cycle, was apparently a 'key figure' in something or other, a vague descriptor that allows for maximum self-congratulation with minimum actual understanding.
Meanwhile, in the labyrinthine corridors of Whitehall, boffins are reportedly modelling scenarios ranging from a modest diplomatic snub to a full-blown revolutionary salsa competition. The absurdity of the modern geopolitical theatre continues, with all the gravitas of a Punch and Judy show where the sausages are made of depleted uranium. As the body count rises and the rhetoric inflates, one can only wonder if the next phase involves a series of unfortunate accidents involving inexplicably misplaced drone strikes on nunneries.
The new normal, ladies and gentlemen, where 'victory' is a transitive verb and 'intelligence' is an oxymoron.
