In a seismic jolt to the already quaking geopolitical teacup, the people of Colombia have elected a Trump-branded outsider as their new president. The news has sent Whitehall mandarins into a frenzy of pearl-clutching and gin-swigging, with the Foreign Office issuing a statement so thick with diplomatic boilerplate you could tile a conservatory with it. The victory of one Rodrigo ‘Rambo’ Ramirez, a man whose political platform appears to be built on a foundation of dodgy tweets and a deep love for aviator sunglasses, has been described as a ‘cause for concern’ by our betters.
Concern? That’s like saying a swarm of wasps in a jam factory is a mild inconvenience. The man’s first act as president-elect was to promise a wall, but not just any wall.
A wall made of cocaine. This is not a joke. I wish it were.
My sources, which are mainly a man who sells watches outside the Colombian embassy and a very drunk diplomat, confirm that the wall is to be funded by ‘the fat cats of Bogota’. The ‘fat cats’ being anyone who owns more than one dog. Meanwhile, in London, the Foreign Secretary has been spotted practising his ‘deeply concerned’ face in the mirror.
This is a face that says ‘I am worried, but not worried enough to cancel my weekend in the Cotswolds.’ Regional stability, my eye. The only thing unstable here is the mental state of the British establishment.
They see a Trump-aligned puppet in charge of a major Latin American nation and they think of their holiday homes in Marbella. The audacity. The sheer, gin-soaked audacity.
Let’s be clear. Ramirez is not just any outsider. He is the kind of outsider who brings a baseball bat to a knife fight, then names the bat ‘Democracy’.
His victory speech was a masterpiece of modern political theatre: a whirlwind of hand gestures, vague threats, and a promise to make Colombia ‘great again’. Great again? When was it great?
When Pablo Escobar was running a cocaine empire and the country was a byword for violence? Or perhaps during the 50-year civil war that no one in the West cared about until the coffee prices went up? The irony is so thick you could cut it with a machete.
And now London warns of instability. Instability is the polite word for ‘we might lose our cheap cocaine and coffee’. The Foreign Office says they will ‘monitor the situation closely’.
That’s Whitehall for ‘we will do absolutely nothing until someone threatens our gin supply’. I have a radical suggestion: how about we let Colombia sort out its own mess? You know, like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Oh, wait. That worked out so well ... Not.
The real story here isn’t Ramirez. It’s the sheer panic of the British ruling class. They see a mirror of their own Brexit farce: a populist wave crashing against the shores of reason, leaving a trail of broken promises and Twitter rants.
So stock up on gin, folks. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.