Hello humans!
I write to you on my travels around Britain. It’s a historic week, because I have embarked upon my inaugural tour of your wondrous nation! Stops completed so far on my odyssey are Cardiff and Bath, and I am currently en route to Portsmouth. Not for a show, but just because I’ve been told that’s where the Victory is, so I should fit in there nicely.
I say I’m heading to Portsmouth, but the truth is that owing to atmospheric engineering works, I’m having to park the Alboreto in Fareham and then take a replacement shuttle to the coast. Honestly, the transport system in your country is fucked.
Anyway, aside from that, I couldn’t have wished for a finer start to the Bindependence Day tour. Humans have been flocking to get their first taste of intergalactic politics, and I am now merrily fine-tuning my manifesto for the years ahead.
Democracy is all about YOU, so I want to hear your ideas for how we (by which I mean I) can take control of the United Kingdom and wider Earth. Next week I’ll be in the great cities of Leeds and Glasgow, so come join the most powerful movement in the galaxy and let’s make Earth great again. Nationwide tickets available here!
In the meantime, it’s been another cracker of a week in human politics. In the sense that human politicians seem to be going crackers. The headline news is of course the latest appalling ravings from the human tangerine, Donald Trump, who used the platform of a Presidential Debate to spread the claim that Haitian immigrants to Ohio are eating cats and dogs.
To which he has now added geese.
Now clearly this pathetic behaviour is just the latest turd to top the shitberg of Trump’s life. But, as horrific as this sounds, there is some method to the madness.
All you have to do is to weigh up these two questions:
how many American voters were paying proper attention to the debate?
how many American voters love cats?
And there we have it. Objectively Trump lost the debate to Harris because his moronic ramblings got shown up for the childish nonsense they are.
But democracy doesn’t care about objectivity.
If the message received by a critical mass of Americans is that ‘Trump loves cats’, he will argue that he did win. And you only have to look at a post he made on ‘Truth’ Social to see what he’s up to.
We are through the looking glass, people, and it’s not the Cheshire Cat that’s smiling. It’s all of them. Could they be the decisive factor as Americans elect the next leader of the free world? This is a dangerous path.
I have been focus-grouping humans on my tour, and the stories I’ve heard about furtive feline behaviour are shocking. Far from the friendly moggy memes that spread so virally online, in real life I’m told cats get up to all sorts. Take this gang in North London.
This querulous quartet of feral felines think that it’s ok to go around urinating all over a poor human’s garden, to have excruciatingly loud sexual intercourse at night, and then when you dare to complain they just stare at you like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Frankly it’s not on.
So as ever with politics, it seems that it’s left to me to offer a third way. Which is to not eat cats but also to not lionise them. (Pun intended.)
Which brings me to 10 Downing Street and the enduring issue of Larry The Cat. This small furry lifeform has outlasted the last five Tory Prime Ministers (not hard in the case of Liz Truss) and is now living out his dotage under the reign of Keir Starmer. But just like millions of other pensioners, Starmer is making Larry’s last days harder than they might be.
First, Sir Keir announced that his family would be bringing in their own cat to live in Downing Street, much to Larry’s chagrin. And now this week, the new Scottish Secretary Ian Murray has gone public in declaring that Larry is in fact ‘a little shit’. All because Larry didn’t want to give him a cuddle.
Mr Murray, pull yourself together. You can’t demand things like that of others. You’re a minister of the Crown. Not a dancer on Strictly.
if you want to endear yourself to the British public, cursing at cats ain’t the way to do it. The Trump strategy is genuinely better than that. People love Larry. It’s not as if he’s urinated on your garden and woken you up by shagging his harem of sex-kittens. Let him be.
To give you an idea of the high esteem with which Larry is regarded, at my Bath tour show I was asked, ‘Should all high level policy discussions be run over with Larry the cat?’ Given the unfeeling start made by the new Labour administration, I wouldn’t be surprised if a high level policy discussion was to run over Larry the cat.
And yet, despite Mr Murray’s hostility, at the same time the British government wants to have its kitty cake and eat it. Why? Because it has been reported in The Times that Downing Street has planned a media strategy for the moment that Larry dies. Let’s just repeat that for emphasis. They’ve planned a media strategy for when the cat dies.
WHY? It’s a cat. The media strategy should be this. ‘Larry has died. Thanks for all the mousing memories.’ That’s it. If any Downing Street staffer has spent even a nano-second of paid work developing plans for what to do when an old cat passes away, something has gone wrong.
Not that Prime Minister Starmer is worried. Just have a look at him, snapped this week on board Keir Force One.
A picture tells a thousand words. And it raises several questions too. What does this say to you? That he’s at ease being PM? That the lobby hacks are relieved to have a grown-up running the show? That they’ve just heard about America being overwhelmed by talk of pet-eating Haitians? That they’ve just been told about the accuracy and effectiveness of ‘Storm Shadow’ missiles? Or they’ve just been told how many pensioners will freeze thanks to losing their winter fuel payment?
If I had to guess, I reckon it’s the last one. After all, who are the least likely age group to vote Labour? The elderly. Who are most likely to have voted Brexit? The elderly. Who would be most convenient to help shuffle off this mortal coil? The elderly (and Larry).
And to think some journalists have called me harsh. I only want to remove 80-year-olds’ right to vote. I’m not legislating to wipe them out completely.
You’ve had New Labour. Keir’s government is going to be known as Hard Labour. Just watch this hyperspace. You heard it here first.
The Tories might be in total disarray, but the new guys in Number 10 will have to start telling a positive story at their party conference in Liverpool later this month. If they don’t, an opposition force is going to be there to take advantage.
By sheer coincidence, my touring show just happens to be landing in Liverpool at precisely that time. Thursday 26th September! It’s time to hold them to a Count.
Bring it on. To binfinity and beyond!
CB x
Larrys death will be cat a strophic