Special Relationships

As is well known, every President of the United States is constitutionally entitled to the services of a weird little creature who bounces around endorsing the incumbent's every word and proclaiming how generally wonderful everything is and why it's all thanks to the wisdom of the White House. As every American schoolchild learns in first-grade civics, the official title of that useful flunkey is First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. But the President has other privileges too; notably that of appointing a vice-president, whose main constitutional function is to protect the President against possible impeachment or assassination by persuading the American people that, no matter how incompetent, crooked or fascistic the incumbent may be, things would be a good deal worse should the deputy be forced to take over.

Being vice-president to the Trumpster, Mike Pence has his work cut out; but the US withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement has enabled him to show his mettle by proclaiming that "for some reason, this issue of climate change has emerged as a paramount issue for the left" - such notorious communists as the German, French and Italian leaders, the chief executive officers of Shell and British Petroleum, and the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson. The Trumpster's aim, if such a term can be applied to the Trumpster's cubicle-spraying approach, appears to be the overruling of those who would invest in renewable energy and the restoration of the US coal industry; Mike Pence duly babbled that the Trump administration has "demonstrated real leadership and real progress" in the battle against non-Fox News facts.

Asked what efforts she had made towards influencing the Trumpster's decision, in her capacity as a major American ally second only to the strutting ex-Caudillo of the Farage Falange, the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK responded that the right Brexit deal was the only answer to everything, and that only by quavering and gurning in our bunkers can we hope to achieve our proper place in the world. The Secretary of State for the Environment is believed to be looking for her wellies.