Trading Motes For Beams

Britain's Head Boy has been caught in his usual statesmanlike mode, pestering a bored nonagenarian like a prefect yapping at Granny on Founders' Day. As the tax-dodgers' friend who tried to remove the right to strike and cut off the funding for opposition parties; as the Beloved Leader whose Home Secretary is operated by G4S and whose Culture Secretary is run by Rupert Murdoch; as the liberal reformer who put his hairdresser in Parliament and who has just had his advertising man knighted, it goes without saying that Britain's Head Boy must have a certain concern about corruption. It is only natural, therefore, that he has invited some experts along so that he can make sure he's doing it properly and not under-using his tuck box.

Since the Head Boy was in the presence of the hated John Bercow, the intermittently troublesome Archbishop of Canterbury and the IDS-witted Chris Graybeing, he decided to have a bit of a trumpet about what a rah-rah cabinet meeting he had chaired this morning. "We talked about our anti-corruption summit," he burbled. "We’ve got ... some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain." The Head Boy was referring to Nigeria and Afghanistan: "Nigeria and Afghanistan are possibly two of the most corrupt countries in the world," he recited, a junior tick having guided him to the appropriate Wikipedia page; but Granny was unimpressed and turned her head away. Welby argued that the present leader of Nigeria is not corrupt, but nobody sought to deny the Head Boy's mission-accomplished in Afghanistan.